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My sentiments from last night's post were expounded upon in The Sun newspaper this morning
Did Clichy or Sagna play for Big SidEEE!!!? NOPE NADA NO, dem still de best wing backs in EPL.
The wingbacks last night was Hoyte and 18 year old Traore, I thought they would not stand up to the challenge but hoped they would.
Me xxx at Waxy's, the prediction for BoyU to win after
seeing the team sheet, 2 starting wingbacks not playing and BoyU love to attack down the wings
**************************************************
Wenger's got to take the blame
WENGER ... weakened full backs
ON the bright side, at least Emmanuel Adebayor and Nicklas Bendtner didn’t have a punch-up.
But everything else that could have possibly gone wrong for Arsenal at Old Trafford on Saturday, did.
And most of the blame can be traced back to Arsene Wenger.
If he wanted to rest key players for the Champions League game against AC Milan on Wednesday night then the first name on the list should have been Cesc Fabregas.
The young Spaniard, so impressive at the start of the season, hasn’t been the same since being rushed back from injury to play in Seville.
At Old Trafford, he once again looked a shadow of the great competitor he is.
Afterwards, there was the normal stuff about Arsenal having greater priorities than the FA Cup.
That was strange in itself since Wenger, having taken Arsenal to five cup finals and won four of them, has always stressed the importance of the competition.
As for giving players a night off, United didn’t exactly send out their first eleven.
Yet even without Ronaldo, Giggs, Tevez and Hargreaves — and with Paul Scholes only playing the last 20 minutes — they still made an embarrassing mess of the Gunners.
There was no excuse for Arsenal.
Imploded
And, certainly, no excuse for subjecting their 9,000 travelling fans to another nightmare to rank alongside the 5-1 humiliation at White Hart Lane a few weeks ago.
Except this performance, believe it or not, was WORSE. It’s almost as if Arsenal supporters are expected to have to pay for their manager’s occasional flights of fancy.
No wonder they started to head for the exits with 15 minutes to go, stopping only for one last chant of “We’ll race you back to London”.
As he can do sometimes, Wenger made a huge tactical error.
Full-back is the one area where you do NOT weaken yourself against a United team that always attacks down the flanks.
Yet Wenger sent out two rookies in Justin Hoyte and Armand Traore. Hoyte was bad enough but Traore was totally out of his depth.
The biggest surprise was Traore was even in the team after being slaughtered by Aaron Lennon in the Carling Cup semi-final.
Then we had Kolo Toure and Emmanuel Eboue, two Ivory Coast stars whose heads were obviously still at the African Nations Cup.
Though that was no excuse for Eboue’s lamentable high tackle on Nani that rightly earned him a red card just after the break.
It’s not the first time Eboue has been in trouble this season. John Terry has only just returned to action after being stamped on at the Emirates.
It’s the old Arsenal attitude problem — summed up by Eboue’s slow, truculent walk off the pitch.
William Gallas was not much better, the Frenchman growing increasingly infuriated with the incompetence around him.
The result was an escalating downward spiral in his own performance that culminated in a nose-to-nose with Nani after Gallas twice aimed a kick at the United player.
Should the FA take a closer look at that one — and with Eboue already out for three games — the ramifications of Saturday will be far more than a confidence-shredding defeat.
Throw in the sad decline of Gilberto and the increasing perception that Bendtner, for all his height, cannot intimidate decent defenders and the problem is obvious.
Arsenal do not have sufficient strength in depth — especially with Robin van Persie and Tomas Rosicky using up all the free hours on the treatment table once reserved for Freddie Ljungberg.
They are five points clear at the top of the Premier League so they must be doing something right.
But you still have the feeling they are an accident waiting to happen. Just as they were last February when their season imploded as they lost to Blackburn in the FA Cup, went out of the Champions League to PSV and were beaten in the Carling Cup final by Chelsea.
In an uncharacteristically prescient preview to Saturday’s match, I suggested the return of Wayne Rooney would galvanise United.
And that Arsenal’s tendancy to provide chances for the opposition would ultimately be exposed.
And so it transpired. Rooney was inspirational in his lone role up front and impressed no one more than the watching Fabio Capello.
The biggest question now is how much psychological damage there has been to Arsenal.
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Wenger is particularly good in this area but he is desperately short on big-game players such as Vieira, Campbell, Pires and Henry.
At this stage of the season, you can’t turn it on and off like running water. You can’t say we lost that one because it wasn’t important.
It’s about a winning mentality, not allowing doubts to creep in.
Arsenal still have to go to Chelsea and back to Old Trafford in the league. And in Europe they face AC Milan, the most resilient side in European football.
By his caution on Saturday, Wenger may well have undermined the rest of Arsenal’s season.
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Did Clichy or Sagna play for Big SidEEE!!!? NOPE NADA NO, dem still de best wing backs in EPL.
The wingbacks last night was Hoyte and 18 year old Traore, I thought they would not stand up to the challenge but hoped they would.
Me xxx at Waxy's, the prediction for BoyU to win after
seeing the team sheet, 2 starting wingbacks not playing and BoyU love to attack down the wings
**************************************************
Wenger's got to take the blame
WENGER ... weakened full backs
ON the bright side, at least Emmanuel Adebayor and Nicklas Bendtner didn’t have a punch-up.
But everything else that could have possibly gone wrong for Arsenal at Old Trafford on Saturday, did.
And most of the blame can be traced back to Arsene Wenger.
If he wanted to rest key players for the Champions League game against AC Milan on Wednesday night then the first name on the list should have been Cesc Fabregas.
The young Spaniard, so impressive at the start of the season, hasn’t been the same since being rushed back from injury to play in Seville.
At Old Trafford, he once again looked a shadow of the great competitor he is.
Afterwards, there was the normal stuff about Arsenal having greater priorities than the FA Cup.
That was strange in itself since Wenger, having taken Arsenal to five cup finals and won four of them, has always stressed the importance of the competition.
As for giving players a night off, United didn’t exactly send out their first eleven.
Yet even without Ronaldo, Giggs, Tevez and Hargreaves — and with Paul Scholes only playing the last 20 minutes — they still made an embarrassing mess of the Gunners.
There was no excuse for Arsenal.
Imploded
And, certainly, no excuse for subjecting their 9,000 travelling fans to another nightmare to rank alongside the 5-1 humiliation at White Hart Lane a few weeks ago.
Except this performance, believe it or not, was WORSE. It’s almost as if Arsenal supporters are expected to have to pay for their manager’s occasional flights of fancy.
No wonder they started to head for the exits with 15 minutes to go, stopping only for one last chant of “We’ll race you back to London”.
As he can do sometimes, Wenger made a huge tactical error.
Full-back is the one area where you do NOT weaken yourself against a United team that always attacks down the flanks.
Yet Wenger sent out two rookies in Justin Hoyte and Armand Traore. Hoyte was bad enough but Traore was totally out of his depth.
The biggest surprise was Traore was even in the team after being slaughtered by Aaron Lennon in the Carling Cup semi-final.
Then we had Kolo Toure and Emmanuel Eboue, two Ivory Coast stars whose heads were obviously still at the African Nations Cup.
Though that was no excuse for Eboue’s lamentable high tackle on Nani that rightly earned him a red card just after the break.
It’s not the first time Eboue has been in trouble this season. John Terry has only just returned to action after being stamped on at the Emirates.
It’s the old Arsenal attitude problem — summed up by Eboue’s slow, truculent walk off the pitch.
William Gallas was not much better, the Frenchman growing increasingly infuriated with the incompetence around him.
The result was an escalating downward spiral in his own performance that culminated in a nose-to-nose with Nani after Gallas twice aimed a kick at the United player.
Should the FA take a closer look at that one — and with Eboue already out for three games — the ramifications of Saturday will be far more than a confidence-shredding defeat.
Throw in the sad decline of Gilberto and the increasing perception that Bendtner, for all his height, cannot intimidate decent defenders and the problem is obvious.
Arsenal do not have sufficient strength in depth — especially with Robin van Persie and Tomas Rosicky using up all the free hours on the treatment table once reserved for Freddie Ljungberg.
They are five points clear at the top of the Premier League so they must be doing something right.
But you still have the feeling they are an accident waiting to happen. Just as they were last February when their season imploded as they lost to Blackburn in the FA Cup, went out of the Champions League to PSV and were beaten in the Carling Cup final by Chelsea.
In an uncharacteristically prescient preview to Saturday’s match, I suggested the return of Wayne Rooney would galvanise United.
And that Arsenal’s tendancy to provide chances for the opposition would ultimately be exposed.
And so it transpired. Rooney was inspirational in his lone role up front and impressed no one more than the watching Fabio Capello.
The biggest question now is how much psychological damage there has been to Arsenal.
var RStag = "";try{RStag = segQS;}catch(e){RStag = "";}document.write('');
Wenger is particularly good in this area but he is desperately short on big-game players such as Vieira, Campbell, Pires and Henry.
At this stage of the season, you can’t turn it on and off like running water. You can’t say we lost that one because it wasn’t important.
It’s about a winning mentality, not allowing doubts to creep in.
Arsenal still have to go to Chelsea and back to Old Trafford in the league. And in Europe they face AC Milan, the most resilient side in European football.
By his caution on Saturday, Wenger may well have undermined the rest of Arsenal’s season.
function printPopUp(url){var pageUrl=url;return fPopUp(650,500,pageUrl);}
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