Booing Gets Its Reward as New Striker Heads Home
New Striker Heads Home
By Boris Mellor
August 16 2009
Some Everton fans booed Lescott all through their teams 6-1 defeat by Arsenal, I am sure that helped. Sure the bloke is after the big money, just like Adebayor, but it couldn't have inspired his team mates. Meanwhile Adebayor's replacement headed in an excellent goal.
Villa fans also booed their team off after their first defeat of the season, always best to start of where you finished. I wonder if Everton and Villa fans will get acres of newsprint devoted to telling them what awful supporters they are?
Best for a long time
This is the best I have seen Arsenal play in a long time - when did we last score six in the Prem against a team in the top five, and it was away. This was Arsenals best ever first game of the season away result. True we want trophies, not records, and there is a long way to go, but it can't do confidence any harm.
Be honest, you were expecting a tough game where a draw would not have been a bad result. Mark Lawrenson predicted a 2-1 win for the Toffees on the basis that Wenger hadn't got his formation worked out in practice yet. Shout at Mark if you like, but quite a few Gunner websites were also concerned about the experiment with 4-3-3.
However, it is hard to judge how much of this was Everton playing badly, and Arsenal playing well. I can't imagine every team in the North West standing off to give our centre backs free headers at goal, certainly not two a game.
Nonetheless it was great fun to watch, and good to receive loads of text messages reading, "Wow - I can't believe it", and so on. One mate, who missed the match, rang up for the result kept saying, "stop winding me up, and give me the real score." It seemed like 5 minutes before I could convince him.
Enjoy the moment
Of course fans should bask in the reflected glory of the six guns overwhelming victory. However as I wrote earlier it is difficult to put this result into perspective. Everton are a better team than Celtic, but I am still sure that the hoops will give Arsenal a tougher game. It is important that the team keeps its feet on the ground after this victory. We still have a hard start to the season.
Getting rid of strikers
One last point, will we miss Adebayor? Well he scored a great goal for City yesterday, but then he was running around something he was no longer doing for Arsenal. However it seemed that abolishing the target man speeded up the team's game. Here was flowing Wenger ball, with quick box to box movement. Last season that was not happening, possibly the get the ball to Adebayor tactic was becoming counterproductive.
Maybe his going has removed the last log from the log jam, and the small men can buzz around with fluidity in the middle. Having big men out on the wing is nothing new, Heskey does it, and so did Radford and Kennedy.
At the end of the day personnel is far more important than formation. There was a time when Wenger said he would never forsake 4-4-2, and then he went to 4-5-1, now he might stick with 4-3-3. He no longer has a striker who can carry 4-5-1, so he is changing it about. Will it succeed? The answer is it is far too early to tell; hopefully we will have a lot of fun waiting for it all to feather out.
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009:08:18:11:51:51 by Padre Pio.
Past experience suggests it is dangerous to draw too many conclusions from the first game of the season but it is a great result to start with and good preparation fr the Celtic game.
Sound, mature words from Fabregas about not getting too excited by this result as well.
i wouldn't want wenger to believe the team is ready for the battles ahead by not signing more quality players cos we still need players for the battle ahead.
something we hardly ever did last season. Defend from the front and midfield and close teams down the way theY love to close us down, then let our football do the rest.
Seems to come down to something Eduardo wrote about last week..
ATTITUDE
I cna never froget the joy and smile on Gallas's face after he scored.
And players rushing over to congrat him.
Give me a warm glow when I perceived Wenger's tactic as shifting scoring burdens to midfielders with "Lone Striker" as link-up Man and playmaker as well in Van Persie.
I am starting to drool over the prospect of a fit Walcott, Rosicky, Vela and a "amtured" Wilshere grooving intot he team soon.
Thsi is multi-prong attacks where opponents cannot predict the direction of attack (e.g. just marked Adebayor..) and with skilful players that can dismantled 4-6-0 defence.