Tottenham Hotspur 2 v Arsenal 1

Premier League Soccer
Tottenham Hotspur v Arsenal. Sunday 3 March 2013.

The north London derby at White Hart Lane is an important one this year: both teams are vying for a spot in next term's Champions League, for which the top four teams in the Premier League will qualify.

Currently Tottenham lie in fourth place and Arsenal in fifth. Spurs will be confident here at home as they currently have one of Europe's best players in the form of Welshman Gareth Bale; he is competing with Barcelona's Lionel Messi in terms of the number of Euro goals he has scored this season. They have finished below Arsenal in the league for the past 17 seasons.

Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger is under pressure because of his stated aim at the beginning of the season of finishing in the top four by the end of it. His critics say that a big club like Arsenal should be aiming to win the Premier League. However, his club have a new stadium to pay for, and Champions League qualification is paramount.

It looks like Tottenham are planning to go with a 4-4-2 formation, with Arsenal having just the one forward in a 4-5-1.

Spurs kick off and work the ball to the right to make use of the speedy Lennon.

6' An exciting length-of-the-field run by Kyle Walker with the ball has the crowd on its feet, but it comes to naught and he has to run all the way back to his defensive position. 10' Spurs French goalkeeper Lloris, who has recently replaced U.S. fan-favorite Brad Friedel, makes a fine stop by rushing off his goal line.

16' Superstar Bale is finding little space between the Arsenal defensive back line and midfield. Just as AC Milan recently snuffed out the threat posed by Barcelona's Lionel Messi, by 'collapsing' 2 or 3 defenders on him as soon as he received the ball, Arsenal are doing to Bale.

20' Sigurdsson, on the left, plays an inswinging curling ball over the top of the Arsenal defense and Bale, untracked, just fails to make contact with it: a dangerous moment for the Arsenal defense.

26' A moment of rarity when we see Kyle Walker, Spurs' right-back appear in attack on the left wing! This is reminiscent of the 'total football' style of the Dutch national team of the 1970s.

36' The midfield stalemate is suddenly broken as, again from the left, Sigurdsson again feeds Bale, whose run has beaten the offside trap. He clips the ball expertly with the outside of his left foot past Arsenal keeper Szczesny. Good pass, great finish. 1 - 0. This is the fifth consecutive game in which he has scored, and a good example why teams like Real Madrid are interested in buying him.

38' Spurs' Parker, yet again from the left side of midfield, plays a similar ball in for the speedy Lennon. He takes a couple of touches to round Szczesny and finishes with aplomb. 2 - 0.

Two-nil at half-time looks a bit flattering to Tottenham, but the Arsenal defenders have neglected to track the Tottenham runners.

50' After good work by Arsenal's Welshman Ramsey, Arsenal win a free kick on the left. It is swung in and Arsenal's German giant Per Mertesacker leaps to head the ball, which comes off Bale's head and ends up in the Tottenham net. 2 – 1.

59' Bale's mixed game continues as he misses a cross from the left and he balloons the ball over the Arsenal goal from close in.

62' Arsenal bring on Czech player Rosicky, and his quick feet and first-time passing leads to one the prettiest passing sequences seen in the Premiership this season. 69' Despite having the lead, Spurs keep pressing and Sigurdsson surely must score, but he squares the ball instead of shooting.

88' Arsenal's Walcott - desperate to become the England national team's center-forward - takes a free kick that just misses the Tottenham goal.

93' Arsenal go close in a frenetic finish, but this exciting match ends.

Tottenham Hotspur 2 – 1 Arsenal.

© Peter Rodd & Soccerphile 2013

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Prediksi Pertandingan Arsenal vs Manchester City

Manchester City berjuang keras untuk mampu mengejar ketertiggalannya dari Manchester United, selisih lima poin di rasa sangat berat untuk dikejar, mengingat sisa pertandingan di liga inggris yang mesnyisakan tujuh pertandinagn lagi bagi MU maupun City. Dan pada pekan ke-32 ini, City bakal menghadapi lawan yang berat, mereka bakal ditantang Arsenal, tim yang berjuang untuk mengamankan posisi mereka di zona liga champions.

Pertandingan diperkirakan bakal seru, kedua tim akan mengeluarkan segenap kemampuan terbaiknya. Bila City gagal mengamankan poin penuh, perjuangan mereka bakal semakin berat, mengingat pada pertandingan lainnya, MU akan menghadapi QPR.

Secara pribadi, saya berharap akan terciptanya pertandingan yang menarik dan banyak gol tercipta. Siapapun yang menang, maka dialah yang terbaik. Meski pada pekan sebelumnya Arsenal kalah dari QPR, tapi menghadapi klub besar motivasi mereka bakal berlipat. Saya memperkirakan Arsenal bakal memenangi pertandingan ini, skor 3-2 untuk kemanangan Arsenal.

Wenger's Job Safe At Arsenal

Arsenal Chief executive (and man City fan) Ivan Gazidis has ruled out sacking manager Arsene Wenger, despite Arsenal's poor start to the new season, which has left them 50/1 with Bet 365 to win the Premier League.

61-year-old Wenger's job security has come under question as the Gunners have won just one of their opening five Premier League games, conceding 14 goals in the process, including four in the 4-3 defeat at Blackburn Rovers last weekend.

However, Gazidis says that making a change is not even an option, with Wenger having been in charge at Arsenal for more than 15 years. Gazidis said at the Sport Industry Breakfast Club in London: "(Sacking him) is a route we are not going to go down. "We will be unmoved in the way we do things and will not be swayed by talk of a crisis. We need to stick together."

Arsenal already trail champions Manchester United by 11 points, with the Red Devils 4/6 to retain their crown after five wins out of five.

8-2 thrashing leaves Arsenal empty

'8-2, eight bloody two' as Michael Palin almost said in Ripping Yarns (8-1).



The morning after Arsenal's worst defeat since 1896 was a sobering one.

The 8-2 capitulation at Old Trafford was slow-motion carnage or schadenfreude at its sweetest, depending on your opinon of the Gunners and Mr Wenger. It was humiliation indeed although even Tottenham supporters had to choke their chuckles as they sit bottom of the division, having been smashed 5-1 at home by Manchester City, fast becoming the first club since Blackburn to so obviously buy their way to the title.

The chasm in power which divides Wenger from Alex Ferguson is vast, despite the Frenchman's historic transformation of London's biggest team. While United have a new breed of youngsters battle-ready for Premier League action, Arsenal are blooding untried rookies with increasingly calamitous results.

Arsenal's acute demise is being blamed on the power struggle between Stan Kroenke and Alisher Usmanov and Wenger's ideological adherence to youth policy and non-English players. Whilst Jack Wilshere and Theo Walcott are two young Anglos who have made it through the ranks, the Frenchman's apparent reluctance to buy hard-working English defenders and midfielders when available appears a flaw in his thinking which has come back to bite him. Indeed it is hard to imagine him recruiting the excellent Dixon, Bould/Keown, Adams and Winterburn back four he inherited from Bruce Rioch.

His adherence to statistics means if a player seems overpriced he shies away and passion, leadership and other English footballing virtues do not register on his Pro-Zone printouts. Fielding eleven multi-functional mobile dribblers is admirable in the age of tiki-taka but how Arsenal could do with another Petit and Vieira in the middle to stop opposition attacks dead.

Wenger's French revolution gave Arsenal an edge for a few years until other clubs aped his off-field science-based training. In addition, the game moves on every few years and no historic system, whether W-M, total football or 4-4-2, can hope to prevail forever. Wenger's excessive self-belief is costing Arsenal points.

Alex Ferguson has cited his 1990 F.A. Cup win as the break he needed to take complete control over Manchester United F.C. and launch his imperial project. A giant of a club had been asleep so long it was almost comatose, so Martin Edwards gladly handed the Scot carte blanche to run the club like a true 'manager' once they felt sure he could bring them a full trophy cabinet.

An impressive Cup Winners' Cup final win over Barcelona the following season, in English clubs' first foray into Europe for five years, convinced the board they had got their man, and a first title in 26 years arrived in 1993.

Ferguson has been effectively unsackable since then, and the Glazers are said to be in awe of him. His rise from under-fire hiring with 90 minutes to save his job (a cup-tie against Nottingham Forest) to great dictator and universal football legend is in sharp contrast to the prevailing trend of managers becoming first-team coaches with directors of football, board members and presidents pulling the real strings high above them. Modern coaches enjoy the lifespan of mayflies in comparison to Ferguson. Moneybags Chelsea have used seven managers in the past five years, while Fergie has ruled the roost at Old Trafford since 1986.

"I know dictators are out of fashion but I would love to be the perfect dictator," said Brian Clough famously. Indeed he was for years at Forest, until he did what almost all dictators do and stay on too long before being ousted by backers who vowed never to repeat the same mistake.

But Wenger has had a relatively free hand at Arsenal, not least in his persuading the capital's most storied team to leave its ancient, sacred home for a new house nearby and make him overseer of the entire youth set-up.

Football is politics again. So often desperate electorates happily hand power to a charismatic leader when hope and tradition run out of steam. US Soccer had been understandably reluctant to give Jurgen Klinsmann the keys to their kingdom for the past five years but after the exasperating Gold Cup final they relented and Klinsi is now in control.

If Arsenal want to emerge from their nightmare, they could hand Wenger a blank chequebook and an even freer hand, assuming his reliance on self-made solutions stems from the tight kitty at Ashburton Grove and not a dogmatic desire to build an Ajax-on-Thames.

But time is running out for Wenger and Arsenal. With transfer deadline imminent and 360 degree pressure on the Frenchman, purchases are probable, yet the downside to leaving it so late to recruit is that price tags rise concomitantly and desperation can set in, leading to panic buying with no time to research players properly.

In his final days at Highbury, George Graham made three hasty purchases at least two of which seemed wrong at the time as well as afterwards -John Hartson, Glenn Helder and Chris Kiwomya.

Wenger has boxed himself in and needs nerves of steel and intense focus to sail his way out of this storm.

(c) Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile

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Wenger in firing line as Arsenal fail to reinforce

Jason Cowley, author of that memorable book about Arsenal and the end of the old First Division, 'The Last Game', has penned a pertinent take on the current dilemma for manager Arsene Wenger.



Starved of funds for reinforcements and with his best players Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri wanting to leave, the Frenchman's dream of an Ajax on the Thames looks to have stalled perhaps for good.



With no trophies for six seasons and prospects of a title challenge or Champions League success slim, Gunners supporters are increasingly questioning the status of their semi-iconic coach, who revolutionised English football's approach to management and took Arsenal from their historic Highbury home to a new stadium at Ashburton Grove.



All a far cry from '96 when Wenger left Nagoya Grampus Eight for London full of high-minded dreams of transforming a club and country's soccer culture.



Writing in the Evening Standard, Cowley opines,





"It's obvious, too, that what he once offered when he arrived in London in 1996 and what gave him such a competitive advantage - knowledge of sports science, new ideas about diet and the use of technologies such as Prozone to monitor and improve players' performances, and so on - is now routine.

Wenger the continental sophisticate once seemed like a very progressive and modern figure, part-boffin, part-romantic visionary. Now, more than ever, he is beginning to resemble a man out of time, one who has stayed too long in the same job and who is forced to look on, perplexed and anguished, as the game changes around him, and in ways he does not like and over which he has no control. This new season could test him to the very limit"

Premier League 2011/12 opening fixtures:

Sat 13th Aug - Blackburn v Wolves, Fulham v Aston Villa, Liverpool v Sunderland, QPR v Bolton, Tottenham v Everton, Wigan v Norwich, Newcastle v Arsenal.

Sun 14th Aug - Stoke v Chelsea, West Brom v Man Utd

Mon 15th Aug - Man City v Swansea

-Sean O'Conor

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Robert Pires

Robert Pires is in line for a shock return to football with Thai Premier League champions Muangthong United. The 37-year-old midfielder is currently training with his old team Arsenal after being released by Villarreal.

It appears Pires is unlikely to follow in the footsteps of Sol Campbell, who was given a short term contract by Wenger last season after training with the team on a similar basis. However the former French international is desperate to prolong his playing career and could be tempted by the prospect of joining one of the top teams in South Asia.

Robert Procureur, the General Manager of Muangthong United, is hoping to sign Pires in time for the next season which starts in March,

“I have been searching for new players from Europe to join our squad next season. I knew Robert Pires from when I visited Arsene Wenger a few years ago and I have already discussed with some people from Arsenal the possibility of bringing Pires to the Thai Premier League. At the moment we are interested in and will try hard to convince him to join Muangthong United,” he said.

Muangthong United recently won the Thai Premier League for the second successive season and are also in the final of the Thai FA Cup. They reached the semi finals of the AFC Cup, the Asian equivalent of the Europa League, and are looking to add at least one high profile player to the squad.

The club have also been strongly linked with Dwight Yorke and Jesper Blomqvist but Procureur feels that Pires would be the perfect signing,

“He is 37 years old but I feel he still has the ability to play as last season he was in the Spanish league with Villarreal. He is a world class player and if he can join us next season it will be a great boost to our team,” he said.

Wenger claimed at a at a press conference last month that Pires, who won the Premier League twice and the FA Cup three times during his six year spell at Arsenal, would still be capable of playing Premiership football,

“Robert Pires can still play in the Premier League. Robert is a fantastic player still today and he loves to play, so anybody who signs him will make a good deal. If we were short, I would sign Pires but we are not short on the offensive side, so we do not need anyone in that department,” he said

With offers from Premiership teams not forthcoming the player, who says he will retire if he has not found a club by the end of January, might well be tempted to finish his playing career in the east.

English football and in particular the English Premier League is hugely popular in Thailand. Former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra famously purchased Manchester City in 2007 in what was widely regarded as a populist and politically motivated move. It is testament to the esteem in which elite English clubs are held in his homeland that Shinawatra felt associating himself with a mid table team could help to bolster his ailing reputation.

A Thai led consortium called Asian Football Investments recently purchased Championship side Leicester City and recruited former Manchester City and England manager Sven Goran Eriksson in a bid to take the team back to the Premiership.

Thai companies are increasingly trying to get in on the act and Chang Beer is the official shirt sponsor of Everton while Singha Beer has signed a sponsorship agreement with both Manchester United and Chelsea.

In previous years there was a feeling that the domestic league in Thailand was being largely overlooked due to fan’s fixation with English football. There are signs that this is changing with attendances at Thai Premier League games on the increase and a handful of wealthy Thai individuals looking to invest in local teams.

Muangthong United are at the forefront of this revolution thanks to a recruitment policy which has seen them combine some of the finest footballers in Thailand with a handful of outstanding African players.

The success which former Muangthong United favourite Yaya Soumahoro has enjoyed in Belgium is evidence of the diminishing gap between Thai and European football. The Ivory Coast midfielder, who was the most outstanding player in the Thai Premier League, signed for Gent in the summer and has made an instant impact in the top tier of Belgian football.

His former team mate Kawin Thamsatchanan could be set to follow in his footsteps. He has been invited for a trial at Manchester United at the instigation of Thailand manager Bryan Robson.

The Thai football season is coming to an end and Muangthong United are braced for the exit of several first team players with a number of European clubs hovering. The club are hoping that at least one high profile footballer will move in the opposite direction and Pires is currently top of the list.

© James Goyder & Soccerphile

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