The Arsenal Week In Review: 7.24.2011

It’s another week down in the summer. And always the Arsenal have been the centre point of the sporting news. And honestly not for any good reason. Well, not for any bad reason either but just because we seem to be the easiest carcas to pick over.  Ah well, for whatever reason, year in and year out, we are everybody’s favourite wipping boy. But let’s get into it.

FC Cologne 1 – 2 Arsenal

Another week, and another friendly down the tubes. This one though wasn’t against some mindless Malaysian all-star team or some pub club from China, it was against a mid-table Bundesliga team, FC Koln and one of my favourite players Lukasz Podalski. If anything it would least give the Gunners a test on the pitch early to see where they are. So what did we learn? Well, we’re pretty much where we were last year – so far.

The squad that was on the pitch for the first half for the most part is our energetic group. It was anchored in the middle by by Aaron Ramsey and Jack Wilshere. With Walcott, and new boy Gervhinho up front as well as Chamakh. And Gervinho did not fail to impress with two very nice goals to lead the attack. The first a skill shot with the inside of the foot over the goal keeper’s after a sublime over the top pass from Wilshere. Gervinho used his pace to get the ball and just dinked it over. It was class.

The second was a nice build up play with Gervinho getting the ball in the box, passing back to Ramsey who saw Walcott on the wing who used his own speed burst to beat the defender and feed Gervinho for a nice put away into the corner. While it’s only pre-season and I will not read too much into Gervinho’s successful start, it was at least a promising sign that Arsenal had a good signing.

The match was not without the bizarre (this is Arsenal after all). Carl Jenkinson who for the most looks like he could be a good addition as he matures, played what looked like a routine clearing and the mis direction of the ball cleared Szczesny’s head and hands and flipped into the net.  It is really one of the most bizarre own goals I’ve ever seen.

The second half was filled with a team with Rosicky anchoroing the middle with Nasri in his preferred position and frankly – I thought we looked lethargic.  The energy of Ramsey and Wilshere was missing from this tandem. Obviously Nasri has other issues on his mind and Rosicky is still – evidently – a shell of his former self.  It will be interesting to see what the team make up is come the start of the season. Because right now many of our youngsters are completely out hustling and outshining some of our more established players. It really comes down to hunger and skill, not skill alone. That is why some of our more talented players fail and others don’t. Its the hunger. You see it in Wilshere, Ramsey, and Van Persie. It is clearly missing from Nasri and Fabregas. No, I am not saying talent wise they are better but I like their talent and hunger combined than I do just Nasri and Fabregas’ talent.

Anyway, another bright spot is that for whatever reason Arshavin looks envigorated again. He has been lively in all three matches and yesterday had a shot that was lucky to be saved.  Here’s hoping that the Russian is going to get back to tway we know he can be rather than the way he has been for the last season and half. I mean come on – he was pitiful for most parts but still ended up with 10 goals. Imagine what an inspired Arshavin could do – I am thinking Euro 2008 Arshavin.

It’s another pre-season match down. The Emirates cup is next weekend. And that mean’s the return of Thierry Henry to the Emirates.

Cesc’s Situation

Another week ended and still no resolution on Fabregas. He’s still here. And we’re still not sure when it will end. I have an idea – how about we end it this week. Frankly this prolonged, drawn out saga is ridiculous. And I blame Barcelona. Seriously, you know what it is going to take to get the lad – if you want him – get it done.

I should add that there are signs that they are doing just that. Bojan is off to Roma for £11 million and a promising youngster is being sold to Chelsea for £5 million. All these sales we believe are part of the plan to cobble together the funds necessary to meet Arsenal’s asking price.  That is why I am of the mind that this will end – finally this week (or next). I do not see this dragging out.  Arsene has set a deadline and for once I believe him when he says he is going to maintain it.

Nasri

I believe that the situation we currently find ourselves in with Nasri is one the player or his represenatives had in mind going all the way back to when the first contact was made on a new contract towards the end of 2010. Reports were that Arsenal had tabled a new 5 year deal that fit into their wage structure. It would have brought him into the top tier of the club wages but not as high as Fabregas.

By February it looked like Nasri would sign the new deal. The club were fairly confident and it looked like a done deal. Hell, even reports from the player’s reps were saying as much. But then something happened. It wasn’t the downfall of the season as many would believe. Why do I believe that? Because his original offer happened when Arsenal still had 4 trophies to play for . So winning – wasn’t his impetus to reject the offer. It was clearly more money.

Arsenal have come back with an offer of £115,000 per week. Which would make him the highest paid player at the club. It is believed he rejected that offer still insisting he will go to City who reportedly would pay him around £150,000 per week.

If winning was what Nasri wanted then he would be after a deal to go to Manchester United not Manchester City. City are still not going to win the league nor will they win the Champion’s League. Hell, unless you are from Spain, you aren’t winning the Champion’s League. City are going through their own issues, Mancini is in a battle of wills with Gary Cook for control of the club and Tevez is pulling his own annual ritual of stay or go. City are an argument away form imploding. Until they can get rid of that – they will never win the league.

But I diguress. What I am trying to say is for Nasri, a kid from the streets of Marseille – its all about money. For most athletes its about money. There are rare few. Fabregas is one of them. His desire to move is born from something else. But for Nasri what he wants is a pay day equivalent to his perceived talent. Any other statement is disengenuous.

Frankly, it pains me to say this but we would be best served if he too moved on.

Transfer Rumblings

The transfer rumour mill was relatively quiet. We had Denilson go out on loan to Sao Paulo and some reserve players are going as well. Wenger came out and confirmed that he is still looking for defencive help.  But there was no clarity about who they were looking at.

The Daily Mail reported that pending the sale of Fabregas and possibly Nasri, Arsenal would sign Juan Mata and Villareal winger Santi Carloza. If it were true it would be the single outlay of cash that the club has made in any transfer market I can remember – as both fees would be around £20 million each. The players mentioned are good players and they would be great additions to the club but frankly I just don’t see it happening. It’s just too big a move. But hell, I thought Nasri and Fabregas leaving would never happen. That’s not exactly working out as I had planned.

2010/2011 Fantasy Football League Recap (by JROY)

Congratulations and thank you to all the winners and players who participated in the inaugural season of fantasy league football hosted by YAMA. An even bigger thank you goes out to DAG for putting it (and this site) together.  In all we had 14 participants who started the season with another 2 joining shortly thereafter.  As any fantasy manager knows there are always those moments where you wish you coulda shoulda woulda done something a little different.  I thought it might be fun to break down the season statistically to see how we all did as managers, the good, the bad, and the downright ugly.

Of course the table doesn’t lie, and a big shout-out goes to Schmurfs who (apparently) in his first attempt at fantasy football came out on top.  Well done!  Is this beginner’s luck or are the rest of us crap?  I guess we’ll find out next season.  Below is the final league table. A hearty congratulations to the top 5 teams who all finished in the top 3% of all participants on the ESPN website with the Schmurfs finishing an amazing 229^th out of almost 50,000 participants at the beginning of the season.  Well done lads!

As you can see from the chart below Schmurfs started off slowly, but gained momentum throughout the season charging up the table in the final weeks in a very un-Arsenal like manner.  You might say that Poisoned Le Sagna had the most Arsenal like collapse, except that it started much earlier in the season…so we’ll have to give the award for the “most Arsenal like collapse” to Arsenal Red Cloud who fell off a cliff in the last two weeks of the season to finish fourth.

One of the things the chart shows is the relative consistency of the various managers.  Below are the Top 4 Managers (since we all know being in the top 4 is EVERYTHING…) based on average league position for the season.  Of course close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades.  But this table does highlight just how well Schmurfs did in the closing weeks of the season.

I thought it might be interesting to see just how well the managers did on a week to week basis.  So I calculated who won the most weeks by scoring the highest number of points.  It was interesting to see that everyone outside of the bottom 4 managers won at least one week. And, of these 12 managers, all but two scored multiple wins.  It was good to see how competitive the league was and that it wasn’t just one or two managers dominating the proceedings.  Below are the Top 4 Managers with the most weekly wins, with a special shout-out to Dial Square who finished well off the pace but racked up quite a few weekly wins.

Going one step further I thought we should see who scored the most and least points in a given game week in keeping with the good, bad and ugly theme.  No one was able to crack the century mark although a few managers did get very very close.  Incredibly there was a week when a few managers managed to score negative points, and it is not with some irony that Royz Boyz “won” both of the best and worst…

One of the interesting features of this particular fantasy league was the “captain’s pick” which allows a manager to select a player on the team to score double their point total for the week.  This is probably a good way to determine if a manager can identify the “hot foot” for the week and pick up some additional points.  Amazingly, three managers did not avail themselves of this option and picked up zero extra points.  Note reading instructions can be helpful… I calculated an “index” based on the top 4 players in each category and took their average score.  This represents what a manager might expect for choosing a player who finishes in the top 4 in their position at the end of the season and playing them as captain every week.  This is sort of the “no-skill” pick and doing so would have picked up 137 extra points for the manager over the season.  Unfortunately more than half our managers would probably have been better off NOT trying to pick the best player on their team each week and changing their pick… So, the Top 4 Managers who added the most value to their team through the use of the captain’s pick are:

Congratulations to MSCygEbo who did the best job picking the best matchups each week.   I also thought it might be fun to see who wone the “most like Arsene Wenger award”.  This award goes to the manager who accumulated the most value for the board, errr team based on the ending value of the 15 players on the roster on the last day of the season.  Since I couldn’t see the “cash balance” of all the teams this was the fairest I could do it.  So, who bought low and sold high?  The best manager managed 15.6% “return” on the initial £100 at the start of the season. The Top 4 Manager’s are:

Finally, I thought I should give out the Tony Pullis award for the manager who seems to be a know-it-all, a great tactician, a wizard in identifying good players, who is generally loud, obnoxious, and annoying, and is the very definition of a mid-table manager.  This coveted award goes to Massive Attack managed by our very own stagg133. Congratulations on being average!

So with all that. . .

2011/2012 You Are My Arsenal Fantasy Football League

Coming fresh off his win of the inagural season, can our own Highbury Steve do the double and win again? He’s going to give it a go in this year’s league we’re sure. We’ve made one change from last year and instead of using ESPNSoccernet we’ve moved the league over to the Premier League site. www.PremierLeague.com. Establish your team and join the league using the following code: 244386-73388

We’re looking forward to another successful season and good luck to you all!

Until next time . . . Stay Goonerish!!

[donate]