Written by George Sezer Thursday, 30 December 2010 15:30

GunnerTalk Blog

By George Sezer

Where do I start? How gutted I am for not building on the great win only couple of days ago?, Mr Wenger’s decision to make 8 changes from the team that gave us the best performance of the season in that very game?, not learning your lesson that in the unforgiving competitions in football, like EPL and CL, you cannot afford to field nothing but your possible strongest side (remember Braga; same mistake -  disrespecting the opposition and competition and we ended up drawing Barcelona in the first round of the knockout stages)?, performance of certain individuals, despite knowing that a win would take us joint top in the league? or the performance of the referee?

We could point our finger at a couple of awful decisions by the man in the middle; he decided to give them a penalty for a foul that wasn’t, to make matters worse the dive from N’zogbia that conned the ref was outside the area. With the standard of refereeing in the Premiership, not much surprise there and we should be used to it. The matter of the fact is that the little cheating shit should have not even be on that position to be able to con the ref if Mr Wenger hadn’t decided to play our second choice right back on the left, against their most dangerous player and with Arshavin of all people playing in front of him to help out. Elementary mistake! That prompted Gunner Shout commenter Marv to write frustratingly “It’s an effin disgrace!! u kno nzogbia is their great threat and u still chose to rest our strongest left back, then on top of that u played Arshavin in front of our makeshift replacement!! is Wenger fuckin losing it or its just me!?”

The danger signs were there before they scored that penalty in the 18^th minute as our 2 supposed defensive midfielders, Denilson and Diaby went missing and they threatened our goal in the first 15 minutes. Twice!

How can he be justified for resting players in their early twenties when playing an injury prone player in two games in two days? It ultimately backfired when Diaby walked off with an injury within half an hour. In a way it was a blessing in disguise and a very telling proof that young players don’t need to be rested for physical reasons as his replacement Wilshere added much needed dynamism into our midfield.

People may argue that we still had enough talent on the pitch despite the whole sale changes and I agree but it’s sometimes it’s not about the individual talents but the consistency and you only get that consistency by playing a settled team, especially in the vital positions. The most vital positions are the middle of defence and defensive midfield. Every team rotates but almost never in CB positions, you have to play your strongest CBs at all times, particularly in tough away games, you only have to look at ManU team a day before our game, in a very similar situation to ours. Sir Shithead Ferguson is nobody’s fool, Vidic and Ferdinand was their CB pairing with their first choice DM in front. Our strongest centre backs are Djourou - I am sure everybody will agree - and one other at the moment, CBs don’t do a lot of mileage in games and mustn’t be rotated unless in extreme situations. Not only he rotated them, he rested our only genuine defensive midfielder as well. Big Mistake!

I understand the need of rotation in hectic festive fixtures like we are in now but in moderation. Resting a fullback, a couple of midfielders and a forward should have been the sufficient, not 8 changes from a team that gave us the performance of the season. OTT!

We still managed to get our noses in front despite all that when ‘can’t be arsed’ multi talented Russian put the ball in the net with a sublime piece of finishing and set Bendtner up for our second in 39^th and 44^th minutes respectively. One of our commenters in our Gunner Shout section summed his performance up perfectly; “how do you judge Arshavin? The guy is involved in our 2 goals but apart from that he was just rubbish, no fighting spirit of any kind”.

We should have been home and dry when Wilshere put Arshavin through with a lovely pass after a 1-1 with Chamakh early in the second half but the Russian shot straight at their goalkeeper. That was after Chamakh narrowly missed the target with a vicious downward header from a corner.

Wigan had a great opportunity to equalise when N’zogbia easily turned Eboue near the half way line carried the ball for ages without any worthy challenge, but luckily Fabianski stood firm to parry his shot. Shortly afterwards the Frenchman lost the plot and head butted Wilshere for no apparent reason and got sent off.

Not for a minute I thought that the game was safe, even after them going down to 10 men with 12 minutes of normal time left. Who could blame me given the way we have been presenting goals like Santa Claus, and we were not going to stop now, not in a festive season, never! Squillaci made sure of that by scoring an own goal from - guess what – a set piece within 3 minutes of the sending off.

Wallcot and Nasri joined the game, in a desperate move from the boss but it was too little too late although we still had enough time for the clown in the middle to rob us the victory when he refused to give a penalty when Nasri’s free kick was handled by a Wigan player in their wall. The Referee, looking straight at it from a close distance with an unobscured view decided to ignore it.

4 points out of 6 in a difficult fixture pile up does not sound that bad but it could have been so much better.