Who Should We Whack First?

"When Pop had troubles, did he ever think that maybe by trying to be strong, and trying to protect his family, that he could lose it instead?"

- Michael Corleone, from The Godfather, Part 2.

To be strong for his family, Michael Corleone had to whack his brother. Fredo had betrayed him, and the sentence for that was whacking. Anything less would've been a sign of weakness. To survive as Don Corleone, Michael had to be strong - no matter what the consequences. And anyway, Michael had prior history. If Michael could whack his brother-in-law and make his sister a widow, why not his own brother?

Actually, Michael Corleone has a penchant for mass whacking. At the end of Godfather, he must've whacked half of the Mafia heads of New York. At the end of Godfather Part 2, he whacked half the criminal elite of America. And at the end of Godfather 3, he took his mass whacking to international levels, taking out a Catholic priest/businessman and assorted European legitimate businessmen.

We need someone like Michael Corleone at the Arsenal. Michael Corleone would look at Arsenal with clear, dispassionate eyes, and he'd have the strength to do what was necessary. Michael Corleone would be strong for the Arsenal - he'd whack off half the playing staff and repopulate it with hungry, effective, experienced players who'll give good performances against the big clubs.

Instead, we have Arsene Wenger, who's afraid of killing his players. He doesn't have the stomach to be strong for the Arsenal, because he's afraid of killing the Fredos of our squad. Michael Corleone wouldn't care about killing Denilson or Almunia. He killed his fucking brother just because he was weak and stupid, so why wouldn't he whack Denilson for being diffident or Almunia for being shit?

0-2 at Stamford Bridge doesn't make me angry anymore. It makes me sick and disappointed. Things have to change. We're defensively naive. We have a shit goalkeeper. We are over-indulgent. Wenger expects this team to rise like a soufflé, but maybe it's time to accept that they're just a sodden pile of deflated soft pastry. This was supposed to the year that we delivered, and if we don't deliver this year, maybe it's time to go back to the drawing board? Maybe even buy some choice players and euthanise some of our Fredos and Hyman Roths?

I hope so. As Michael Corleone once said "If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything, it's that you can kill anyone."

From Hero to Zero

"When you are fighting with Manchester City, Tottenham, Liverpool and Aston Villa you cannot say that because you finished third it is a disaster. It is very important to win trophies but if you do not, you do not go from being fantastic to zero."

- Arsene Wenger, alarmed at being thought of as zero

I can see where Wenger's coming from. With the squad at his disposal, 3rd is a pretty good achievement. I'd have accepted 3rd place with this squad at the start of the season. And if we consider this season's performance against last year's, we can see definite improvement. Song, Ramsey and Diaby have all made considerable improvement. The 4-3-3 has been a qualified success. And for a brief moment in January, we were even top of the league.

The problem is that we've kind of fell into 3rd place. Wenger's comparing us to Man City, Tottenham, Liverpool and Aston Villa. Tottenham and Aston Villa can't compete with us financially and don't have Champions League calibre players. Man City are a circus and need time to gel. Liverpool are a financial basket-case and their only two players are hobbled by injury. All we need to do to get to 3rd place is win the games we're winning, lose the games we're losing, and wait until the other sides fall apart.

However to get beyond 3rd place, we need a bit more action. We haven't seen much from Wenger to suggest that he's serious about correcting our glaring deficiencies. We're still thin in defence and thin in central midfield. van Persie's out for the season, Bendtner's still unfit, and Arshavin's cracking the shits at having to play as a centre-forward. We're still vulnerable to the counter-attack down the flanks, and our defence is still a joke. Almunia shouldn't be our first-team goalkeeper. Players such as Nasri have trouble motivating themselves. These issues have been apparent for some time (up to 5 years, in the case of some), and they still haven't been addressed. If we're going to make the step from 3rd to 1st, we're going to have to address these problems.

I don't understand why some fans are blind to it. We are wallowing in mediocrity. And unlike Spurs, this isn't acceptable. Unlike Spurs, we are not a small club with large ambitions. In fact, we have become the opposite - we are a large club with small ambitions.

A club of Arsenal's stature should be competing for trophies. We have the 3rd highest wage bill in the Premiership. We have money. I'm sick of making excuses for the board for not spending, because clearly we have the money. There's a clause in the Emirates loan that stipulates that 75% of transfer income should be spent on wages or transfers. After Toure and Adebayor went to Man City, we could've, and should've, spunked a few million on players who could've improved us. Instead, we extended the contracts of players who hadn't done anything to deserve it. There's something wrong with handing Theo a 60k a week contract, Denilson a 40k a week contract, and giving Rosicky anything other than a pay-as-you-play contract. Especially if we then claim that we can't attract super, super players because they'd break the wage structure.

We have the personnel to make a better fist of it. Maybe not good enough to win the league, but at least to put up a fight. Consider our CL Final defence (Flamini, Toure, Senderos, Eboue) against our defence against Man Utd (Clichy, Gallas, Vermaelen, Sagna). Man for man, our current defence is miles better. But tactically? I'd rather the make-shift defence that knew its limitations and took pride in keeping clean-sheets. I wouldn't bet much on thinking our current back four could go through to a Champions League final without conceding a goal. And it makes me angry because if we only paid attention to defence, we have the players to make an outstanding back four.

In the above quote, Wenger's saying that we don't go from "fantastic to zero" if we don't win the league. And yes, 3rd is better than what I thought we'd come. But is that any cause of celebration? Bouncing between "not bad" and "not good" isn't something we should be aiming for. As things stand, we're not good enough to win the league. We're not bad enough to drop out of the Top 4. I can't see anything that will change that. That might be fine for the Arsenal board and Arsene Wenger, but for an increasing number of gooners, it's not. I think we deserve a bit more ambition from the men in charge.

We're the Arsenal, and we're better than that.

Arsenal 0-0 Aston Villa

"Any game you have to win at the moment."

- Arsene Wenger, about a game we didn't win

As a glory-hunting, plastic, doom-and-gloomer, I'm not sure what to make of this result.

As a doom-and-gloomer, my automatic response is that we've dropped 2 points, Vermaelen's out for the season, Arsenal are fucked, and that Wenger has pissed it down the drain again by not buying in the transfer window. If Vermaelen's out of the season, we're down to Gallas, Campbell and Silvestre, and that's pretty desperate. If we lose the league and it's all down to van Persie being out for the season, and Vermaelen being out for half the season, I'll be upset at Wenger for not adding to our squad.

But as a glory-hunting plastic fan, I see that we're 3rd on the ladder, still have to play the other leaders in the next few weeks, and that if we get lucky, we can be top of the league again by March. We need to hold our own during our run of Liverpool, Chelsea and Man Utd. If we get 6-8 points, I'd be happy. We've a fairly weak run after next month, and we play better when we've been written off and we're chasing a league leader.

Also coming to a pub near you, Arsenal vs Man Utd in 3D. Apparently, once you can see the depth and the contours of 3D TV, it opens up a whole new world of TV sport viewing. It's exciting. I wonder how 3D football translates on a jerky, postage-stamp sized internet stream?

And Jack Wilshere, say it ain't so. Don't go to Bolton on loan. What could they possibly teach you? They're dirty, lying, cheating bully-boys. It's not a good idea to play with them. They might be contagious. Why not go to a nice Spanish or French club?

Jay-Z's a gooner

"I'm glad Arsenal now know it's them I support. It would be good to chat with Cesc and some of the other guys over lunch. The next time I'm playing in England I would like the Arsenal playesr to come and watch my gig and then come backstage afterwards."

- Jay-Z, as gushy as a kid in a No.4 shirt

Apparently, Jay-Z supports Arsenal and his favourite player is Cesc Fabregas. He has a wish to meet the Arsenal players one day, and organise a time when they can come backstage with him one time when he does a gig in England. I find it quite remarkable that a guy like Jay-Z, who has everything the world can give, can come off sounding like a fan-boy when talking about the Arsenal.

It clarifies a few things, though. I always wondered why Adebayor was so pissed-off and regretful about leaving the Arsenal. It couldn't be because of the money. It couldn't be because of the trophies. And it couldn't be because of missing the opportunity to head-butt a team-mate on the pitch - with Craig Bellamy on the team, they're bound to start fighting one day.

I think Adebayor's regretful because he's going to miss the opportunity to meet Beyonce. If Jay-Z wants to meet the team, they would've met her one day. Didn't he once compare the chance to play for Barca or Milan to the chance of dating Beyonce? At the Arsenal, he would have had an opportunity to meet her, and maybe even impress her with the reflected glory of the Arsenal. But now at Man City? Fat chance. No one thinks playing for Man City is impressive.

I wonder how Jay-Z would react if an Arsenal Adebayor was to chat up Beyonce? I wonder if he'd be chuffed like a fan-boy that Adebayor was chatting up his wife?

Stoke 3-1 Arsenal

"We have four very important games now in a short space of time, that is what we are focusing on.

- Arsene Wenger, like me, has other priorities than the FA Cup

I didn't sleep well last night and spent a few hours lying in bed, playing Snake on my phone and listening to my iPod. The thought came to me that, since I couldn't sleep anyway, I might as well get up and watch Arsenal play Stoke. But then I thought, fuck it, it's only the FA Cup.

Seems like I wasn't the only one who thought that. Wenger put out an inexperienced team, and we played like an inexperienced team would play. 3-1 to Stoke on the night, and I must say that it's a bit of a shock first thing in the morning. It's like pouring sour milk over your cereal, or waking up in a puddle of your own drool.

As Wenger explained:

"The game was more physical than technical, and physically they were stronger than us in a very simple game. We were exposed to a fight and some of our players were a bit young and could not cope with it. I do not regret the side I put out, I did not have much choice. We had 10 injuries and a very difficult programme coming up.... I can only stand by the team I selected in the circumstances, we lost but there was not much room for manoeuvre in terms of players available."

I hope it doesn't mean anything. People have said that we're a confidence team, and we play best when we have wind in our sails. This is a bit of a puncture in that sail, but hopefully we'll get by. We're a bit more mature than two years ago, when throwing a Man Utd FA Cup tie really knocked the stuffing out of us. We've got a few hardened pros who can prop up the spirits. I think that's the difference between this side and the 2007 side. That one was fuelled by adrenaline and enthusiasm, and it was held together by Flamini's little pumping legs. This one is fuelled by an all-out commitment to attack because we've a crap goalkeeper, and it's stabilised by experienced players like Gallas, Vermaelen, Arshavin and Rosicky. There's a subtle difference between the two.

I really fucking hope that's true because as Wenger mentioned, we have a really fucking difficult programme coming up, and we really need to be on top of our game. Oh, and I really, really hope we get a new goalkeeper soon - someone starting with "A" and ending in "kinfeev" would be nice.

Do we care about the FA Cup?

Stoke City tomorrow night(?), and I'm wondering if the FA Cup is a worthwhile competition. I realise English people regard it with a certain affection, but why? It's an unseeded, one-legged cup competition that offer little little prize-money and a UEFA Cup place for the winner. For a club of Arsenal's stature, it's not much more important than the League Cup.

So why not throw the match?

It'll be nice to see the kids up against Stoke. The Guardian preview has Coquelin at right-back with Eastmond as DM. I'm thinking it'll be advantageous to have Eastmond as right-back (he's played there before), but mainly out of curiosity to see how Coquelin will do in the midfield. Heard great things about him.

We don't need to win the FA Cup this year. Especially not with the run of league games we've got coming up. I'd rather lose this and pick up points in subsequent games, rather than have a bunch of exhausted players fronting up against Chelsea and Man Utd in a month's time.

After all, it's just the FA Cup

In other news, 87.3% of Guardian readers think that Gary Neville is a "boot-licking moron". I'm not sure about the other 12.3%, but they're probably thinking something lot worse. Whatever the case, it's bad form to bag an ex-teammate, especially one who's playing for your cross-city rival and who plays better when "fired up". Carlos Tevez was right, and Alex Ferguson and Gary Neville were wrong.

I'm A Transfer Muppet

Myles Palmer knows a guy who knows a guy who has a friend who saw Edin Dzeko at the ground last night. Myles also knows that Wenger wasn't at training yesterday. And Myles put two and two together and reasoned that Dzeko is coming to Arsenal.

I think he's jumping the gun, personally.

I think we're getting a bit jittery because the transfer window is closing. Ten days to go, and we've only signed a 35 year old and a couple of boys. Ten days left to buy the two or three player would could make a real difference in our title run. Ten days of waiting, and watching, and hoping that Wenger has been foxing with us and has been frantically scouring the transfer market for all this time.

Dzeko to Arsenal would be really neat. We get a bit of Bundesliga on TV in Australia, and I've been impressed with Dzeko. He's big, strong, fast, good with his feet, can hold up the ball. He can act as a traditional centre-forward and free up Arshavin. I'd like him at the club, but you never know what Wenger's going to do. Buying Dzeko would probably kill a fair number of Arsenal kiddies, and I'm not sure Wenger's got the stomach to do that.

One of the kiddies that Dzeko would indirectly kill would be Fran Merida. Merida's a schemer on the flanks, and if Dzeko is bought, we'd put Bendtner on the flanks permanently and squeeze Merida out of the first team squad. In that case, Merida's probably going to do something stupid, like join Atletico Madrid.

I hope Merida doesn't join Atletico Madrid. They're mad. They're what Tottenham would be like if they'd been run by fascists and managed by a succession of Harry Redknapps. Reyes joined them a few years back, and his career has since flat-lined. If Merida joined them, there's no telling what will happen to him.

I hope he stays at the Arsenal. He's got Arsenal written all over him, as evidenced by quote from Cesc Fabregas:

"I was very pleased for Fran Merida, who scored his first league goal. It's a real shame that he injured his foot... It's been frustrating for him because he hasn't played three games in a row for a couple of years. That makes it very difficult for any player to show what you can do. Everyone at Arsenal believes in him, so hopefully he'll be back soon."

With injuries every three games, he's a perfect replacement for Rosicky.