we are the generation, can't keep us underground.

we'd won it. 98 minutes on the clock, robin van persie takes his shirt off as he celebrates the scored penalty and the crowd breathe a collective sigh of relief. not even arsenal could cock this up surely? yet when the final whistle was blown by andre marriner, a different sigh echoed around the emirates. one of frustration this time as in the 101st minute, a rash and foolish challenge by eboue in the penalty area meant liverpool equalised with the last kick of the game. i believe both penalties were the correct decisions and instead of spending our energy on questioning the officials, we need to learn how to defend a lead. argubably a fair result overall but losing out on two points has damaged our challenge for the title. its mathematically possible of course but if manchester united win at st james park on tuesday, it's incredibly difficult to imagine arsenal would pose any great threat. the game against united on the first of may will only be important if we win both our away games before then, against tottenham and bolton. anything less and i fear the game at the emirates on mayday would be relatively meaningless.
if this means playing a different style of football, then so be it. points have been dropped this season through our tendency to try and walk in the ball into the net, with a reluctancy to shoot in good positions. arsenal need a 'plan b' because that isnt always going to work. after such a disappointment, i can understand fans' anger but non-constructive criticism won't change anything and calling for wenger to resign won't help at all. everyone needs to get behind the team - we might not get such a good chance for a while and its still possible. come on lads!

too much of anything is too much.

it is well documented that out of all the world's sportstars, cricketers aren't as well paid as others. maybe this is why the IPL was born and although it may appeal to millions, it also has just as many critics. a competition which is based around money usually attracts the world's biggest stars but apart from the obvious, why are they there, why are they playing? unless you're an indian cricketer, it's unlikely you'll have any real connection to your chosen team. players are bought for millions and swap teams every year, no loyalty to a team. obviously, you want to play your best cricket but at the end of the day, there can't be much to motivate the players.
this year, eoin morgan is the only england regular taking part. kevin pietersen was meant to but thanks to a hernia operation, he had to miss out. although it meant him missing a part of england's world cup 'failings', it could mean that it benefits england's summer, with test series, ODI series and two twenty20 games all coming up. pietersen a key part of england's ashes tour down under meant he had little rest between the ashes, the ODI series and then the world cup. the ipl may pay well but out of all the england cricketers, kevin pietersen is probably the one least in need of extra cash.
the ipl is broadcasted all around the world, therefore allowing players to play on the 'world stage' but competitions like this are having a massive impact on county cricket. take for example my county essex, one of our best players, ryan ten doeschate. he impressed in the world cup but instead of bringing this good form back to essex, he was bought by the 'kolkata knight riders'. it is quite likely that he won't return for essex until the middle of may; missing key games in the county championship and CB4O competitions.

it's not a nice thought to think that a money-fuelled competition such as the IPL could be damaging the world famous county season, an english tradition with over a hundred years history behind it.

goodbye to the tag 'chokers' or 'bottlers' please.

1. Man Utd P31 Points 66
2. Arsenal P30 Points 59
3. Man City P31 Points 56
4. Chelsea P30 Points 55

win the game in hand against tottenham and beat manchester united at home & we're in a pretty comfortable position to say the least. yet everyone seems to be ruling us out of the title, critics and fans a-like. an away draw at west brom and a home draw against blackburn has seemed to signal the end of the world and the end of arsenal's season. without causing offence to these teams, on paper both should've been arsenal victories but remember we've taken points from games this season that not many people expected us to. two examples of this are manchester city away and chelsea at home, in the end both convincing wins for the arsenal.
every team goes through bad patches and after being knocked out of three competitions in thirteen days, it was almost inevitable that our bad run would come off the back of that.
a summer clearout is needed and arsene wenger will have to buy some decent back-ups for the players & start playing the talented stars of the youth team instead of persisiting with poor players such as denilson, bendtner and squillaci.
staying with this season however, the key is obviously to remain unbeaten and hope united drop points, which is incredibly likely seeing as they have a few tough games coming up in the league and of course, the two champions league games against chelsea.

c'mon afc♥

one tournament doesnt make a bad captain.

i had two choices of topic today for my blog. england's win over wales in the euro 2012 qualifier or england's crushing, ten wickets defeat in the cricket world cup quarter finals. however, i decided not to particularly discuss either, as the real story being talked about this morning is whether andrew strauss should keep england ODI captaincy.
when we were buzzing from the ashes in early february, i cant imagine anybody was calling for strauss to give up the captaincy. in fact, i'm sure everyone thought he was some sort of god. him and andy flower had master-minded the team to a victory down under, something that no england team had achieved in 24 years. yes the ODI series after didn't go to plan. my interpretation of the 6-1 series defeat was that the players were mentally and physically drained. how can you motivate a group of players who are playing a series simply, in the words of graeme swann, 'playing fairly meaningless matches scheduled purely to put silver in the coffers of some cricket board'. i'm not saying the lads didn't try but the ashes had already been won. their main mission was complete.
regarding the debate over strauss, england coach andy flower said 'i don't think making snap judgements at the end of five months of solid cricket, is the right time to be doing it'.
and after all, when looking back at the world cup campaign, is there evidence to suggest that strauss was a weak link? absolutely not.
an eighty eight in the opening match against the netherlands and a memorable century against india are just two examples of the quality of strauss in one day cricket.
he leads by example on and off the pitch and at the age of 34, still has alot more to give as one day captain. i am struggling to believe the rumours that alastair cook replacing andrew strauss as ODI captain are one, true and secondly that it would benefit the team. cook, a man who hasn't played ODI cricket for england for a while, cannot be the solution to england's 'failing' in the fifty over format of the game. cook is a fantastic test batsman and will captain the test team to glory in a few years. now is not the time to promote him to ODI captain.

one of the best winter's in english cricket should be not overshadowed by an inconsistent world cup and media pressure on strauss.

nobody's perfect.

thirteen months ago, fabio Capello stripped john terry of the england captaincy stating that terry would never be england captain again as long as he was in charge. however, a year or so later and it seems as if fabio could be making a dramatic u-turn. last month's win second half in copenhagen signalled that a permanent england captain is desperately neccesary. the last half an hour of the game was spent passing the armband from player to player, yet argubably the player with the most captain-like qualities, was left to watch the game of 'pass the armband' from a distance without participating.
seeing as offical captain and vice captain (ferdinand and gerrard) seem to be out of the games against wales and ghana at the end of the month, many have argued that capello should reinstate terry for these games or maybe even in the long term.
a few people in the media have come out and said that terry deserved to have the captain's armband taken away from him and that he doesnt deserve to get it back. i disagree with both parts of that sentence.
john terry was said to be a bad captain because of events in his not-so-private life. yet the first thing capello did after sacking terry was to appoint ferdinand as captain, hardly a man known his quiet life, more like trouble follows him everywhere he goes. vice captain steven gerrard has been in court and wayne rooney is no role model off the field. england's most capped full back is never off the tabliod's front pages, most recently for shooting a work experience student with a rifle!
all fantastic players but nowhere near perfect off the pitch. john terry: a fantastic player but had his responsibilities as a captain taken away from him because of off the field actions. seems rather hypocritical doesn't it?
capello shouldn't be pressured by the media into making a decision as he is in charge and he should do what he thinks is best.but if he's looking for a captain who leads by example on the pitch and gives their all in every game for england, look no further than john terry. nobody's perfect.

what a difference thirteen days makes.

this time two weeks ago, we were in four competitions and looked like we had a fair chance in all of them. a defensive error against birmingham at wembley cost us the carling cup, a pathetic referee & an average performance led to us going out of the champions league with a whimper against the 'mighty' barcelona and an unlucky defeat at old trafford yesterday, led to yet another cup exit.

i can't make up my mind whether this will benefit our push for the title or if a lack of confidence could damage us more than i'd like to think.

next game, west brom away. it wasn't considered an easy game before the 'slump' but now, it looks like a real test. the squad is riddled with injuries to key players. johan djourou out for the rest of the season, with thomas vermaelen showing no signs of a comeback anytime soon, meaning the rest of our season relies on good, solid performances from laurent koscielny and sebastian squillaci.
'good' and 'solid' aren't really the words that come to mind when you first think of squillaci. maybe if he had more experience, i would suggest turning to ignasi miquel. a young, promising spanish central defender. but i fear this would be too much pressure on the eighteen year old.

we'll have to keep the faith with squillaci because we have faith in arsene wenger and i like to think that arsene wenger would know a good player from a shit player.

this premier league title is up for grabs and there's no reason why we can't win this. we've put in some really good performances this season and as long as we can deal with the pressure, we'll be absolutely fine.

c'mon arsenal!
we still believe.

i'm in a blogging mood.

probably cricket related. needs some inspiration?

everybody makes mistakes and that's just what we do.

i sat here pondering about a title for this blog for a long time. i turned to mcfly, four lads who never fail to inspire me. 'sorry's not good enough' came onto my ipod. too many lyrics appopriate for what i'm just about to write. no don't worry, this isn't an obituary for arsenal football club, i'm not ruling us out of winning a trophy this season, i just think writing this will help me put yesterday firmly in the past. i was distraught when the final whistle was blown by mike dean. the cheers of the thirty thousand birmingham supporters seemed deafening all of a sudden: even watching on a television just under fifty miles away. this isn't a platform for me to air my childish and depressing rants, so i'll stop now. we should focus on the positives! our first final since cardiff 2007 and we had a memorable journey to wembley, which is well worth reliving at least one more time.

21.O9.1O
tottenham 1 arsenal 4
a scoreline that i'll never get tired of hearing.

i was thinking of just simply stating the scoreline without any story or summary, as looking at the score is more than satisfactory to me. however, beating someone 4-1 usually suggests battering the opposition for ninety minutes but that wasn't exactly true of this game.
we were leading one nil within the first fifteen minutes, a good goal from henri lansbury, a fantastic talent who i'm sure will be a star of many of my future blogs. arsenal looked relatively comfortable for the rest of the half. a second goal was a must and would've killed them off. but you know arsenal, doing things the easy way just isn't how we work. four minutes into the second half and keane scored. more chances followed but the winner didn't come. an extra thirty minutes then lay ahead of us. only one minute into extra time and we were awarded a penalty. confidently our player of the season so far, samir nasri, scored. repeating the same action five minutes later, another penalty calmly tucked away. 3-1. not long till substitute andrey arshavin scored and made it 4-1. 'shall we make a dvd?' rang around white hart lane, what a beautiful sound.

27.1O.1O
newcastle O arsenal 4

i dont particularly like writing about games like this. we weren't dreadful, so i can't write a thousand words about a horror show. but it wasn't the perfect performance. it was good. we were comfortable against a weakened newcastle team. after a frustrating forty five minutes, we were rewarded by an own goal from newcastle keeper tim krul. the second half flew by, we were rather more successful when it came to taking our chances. two goals from the impressive theo walcott showed how potentially influenical he could've been at the world cup with england, even as an explosive super sub against tired defences.

3O.11.1O
arsenal 2 wigan O

i snapped up my ticket the minute they went on sale, hoping for an exhilirating goal fest. wigan, poor away from home and struggling at the bottom of the league, weren't expected to pose much of a threat. it turned out to be much more of a tense evening than we thought at a snowy emirates; mostly through our own wasted chances and not wigan's resilience. not the best arsenal game i've been to but we did okay and okay was enough against a wigan team who offered very little in front of goal. semi finals of the carling cup beckoned, exciting times ahead for the arsenal.

12.O1.11
ipswich 1 arsenal O

ask any ipswich fan what they thought of this game and they'll tell you it was the highlight of their season. on the other hand, any arsenal fan will tell you that it's a game they'd rather forget. sadly a performance like that, wont leave my mind. i'm rarely that infuriated by an arsenal game but i was speechless after that game. sloppy, wasteful and disappointing are only a few of the adjectives that come to mind. the defence looked shaky and frail against championship defenders. the midfield lacked its usual creativity. at the end of the game, the players looked crushed as did the fans. we knew the players were capable of so much more. wembley was so close and improvement was crucial for the second leg.

25.O1.11
arsenal 3 ipswich O

i purchased my ticket for this game over a month beforehand. the biggest and argubably most important arsenal game i've been to. after the dire performance of the first leg, i had enormous butterflies in my stomach on the train and tube. sadly at half time, i still had those butterflies. chance after chance and still no end product. the crowd were howling. screams of 'how did he not score that?!' came constantly from our block. and i began to think, 'what happens if this carries on? we might not get to wembley after all'. i was panicing, as i'm sure a few others were too.
forty five minutes later and after a tearful rendition of 'que sera sera', i stood at the bottom of the stairs of block 3O and clapped the players off the field. three goals in twenty minutes had sent us to wembley. we weren't exactly amazing but we were on our way. a place in the carling cup final.

27.O2.11
arsenal 1 birmingham 2

even writing the score hurts. i don't think i can sit here and write a full match report. i'll have to summarise to stop myself from crying. we played well, as did birmingham. unlike us though, birmingham didn't make ridiculous mistakes. we ruined our own chances. credit to birmingham though, they gave us a difficult game and their fans didn't stop singing for ninety minutes. i don't want to sit here and analyse their winner. a suicidal mix up between koscielny & szczesny.
we were so close, so it hurt but we'll get another chance. we've got too many good players for us not to get another chance at silverware at wembley. we're still in three competitions and going strong. come on you gunners!

i give my all to you.

because a bit of heartbreak makes the ecstasy just that bit sweeter.

this isn't the end, its only the beginning. dont give up because we're onto something good and we'll get rewarded for our hard work.



afc; today, tomorrow, forever♥

you know i'd never ask you to change..

...if perfect's what you're searching for, then just stay the same.

frustrating and stressful day thanks to arsenal...
but you always come good in the end.
even though you do stress me out sometimes
would i love you as much if you changed?
damn right i wouldnt.
♥

ps please dont steal, my mummy took this at the game today. we were row 2, it was lush :}