The Royal Arsenal

Ask any Arsenal fan about Arsenal Football Club and at some point you’ll hear about “The Arsenal Way”.  Its one of the reasons I support this club.

Hard to define, its a nebulous concept related to doing the “right thing”, a nod to tradition, a very English concept of “proper behaviour”.

When Peter Hill Wood described American Stan Kronkie as “not our sort”, it immediately invoked to my mind at least, notions that a takeover by him would not seek to protect the Arsenal Way. 

That’s why i was astonished to read that the Double winning captain of our 1971 team Frank McLintock is a season ticket holder in a recent interview he conducted at:

http://www.goal.com/en/news/9/england/2010/04/21/1888253/exclusive-arsenal-and-arsene-wenger-need-to-tell-fans-the

Basically, we make an Arsenal hero pay for his seat.

Thats surely not The Arsenal Way? It smacks of a lack of appreciation for what Frank has acheived, of a grubby money hungry attitude that would fit better over at Stamford Bridge or The Eastlands Stadium.

Its not behaviour becoming of Arsenal Football Club.

If we as Arsenal fans don’t protect the Arsenal Way then it will die, so what I propose is that fellow Gunners let their voices heard on these pages. I’ll then forward the link to the Arsenal press office for their comments and the national press.

Hopefully by standing up for an Arsenal legend, we’ll get him a seat at the Emirates.

Queen of Suburbia.

I guess most Arsenal fans have got to have a player to hate. I’ve never quite understood why that figure has to be an actual Arsenal player as opposed to, oh I don’t know, an opposition player, but there you go.

This week, and not for the first time, it seems that player is Denilson. 

The arguments both for and against Denilson are pretty well worn, so i’m not going to rehash old ground now.  It basically boils down to whether you find overwhelmingly positive stats a convincing argument or not. To the untrained eye, he’s not a swashbuckling Steven Gerrard type or even a put the ball on a sixpence style midfielder like Cesc Fabregas. Therefore, he must be worthless.

And that, it seems to me, is the biggest issue he faces in winning over the unconvinced. Denilson you see, is very good at winning the ball through interceptions (witness his goal vs Everton) and is very good at giving the ball to more creative players.  Whilst he wins his share of tackles, he doesn’t do it in the eye catching manner of Everton’s Fellani who had a very good game against us this weekend or indeed our own (and former Arsenal fans figure of hate) Alex Song.

Some only really start to understand Denilsons value when he’s paired with those sorts of players. In tandem with Song and Fabregas, Denilson is fantastic.  Song does the muscle work, Fabregas applies the coup de gras and Denilson quietly goes about winning the ball and keeping the tempo nice and high.

The Arsenal midfield is a well oiled machine, the balance is effective, take two important cogs out and you upset that balance. Replace those parts against Everton with Diaby and Ramsey neither of whom had fantasic games and you highlight Denilson’s weaknesses.

Denilson is one of the top midfield players in the league. He’d walk into any other side other than perhaps Chelsea’s. A subtle player who keeps the ball moving which is vital to our style of play.  He’s also 22 years old so he’s only going to get better.

Lots of people watch football, but not all of them see the game.

As well as a layer of snow, we wake to the news that Arsenal legend Patrick Vieira is headed over to the millionaires club at the Eastlands Stadium, Manchester.

Likely to be a six month loan, it’ll no doubt prompt those inclined to complain to wail and gnash their teeth about how he could have improved our depth in Central Midfield with Song away at the African Nations Cup.  I think that’s missing the point.  Wenger has long since held the view that Vieira’s incredible energy levels were what help him stand out at his peak, he talked about him probably moving back to centre back later in his career if he’d have stayed.  We had his best years, we don’t need him now.  At this point Denilson, Diaby and Ramsey are far better options.

Reports suggest that Fran Merida is likely to head back to Spain having signed for Athletico Madrid.  Thats a shame if true, purely from the perspective that clearly the talent was there and we clearly wanted to keep him. Still, occasionally one gets away especially if he’s as far down the pecking order as he appears to be at the moment.  No doubt, every time he completes a pass for Madrid, there will be an element of the “supporter” base that uses it as a stick to beat the Manager with, but the reality is he’s not contributing to the first team currently and probably wouldn’t in the next three seasons at least either.

Both Nik Bendtner and Cesc Fabregas will be missing tomorrow night vs Bolton and probably vs Everton on Saturday as well but hopefully they will make it back in time for Bolton (again) on the 17th.

That’s all for now, match preview tomorrow.

I figured I’ve been posting on enough Arsenal blogs that it was about time I started my own!

The basic idea is just have a place that houses my ramblings about Arsenal.  I’ve used Tumblr, i’ve no idea if its any good so bear with us while we play around with graphics and formats and such like.

Feel free to comment! I promise that unlike the more negative Arsenal blogs, i won’t moderate all dissenting opinions out of existence but at the same time, you should know that first and foremost, the team here at Queen of Suburbia are Arsenal supporters and our posts will reflect that!

Anyhow, welcome, come back tomorrow and i’ll tell you why I don’t think Arsenal need to resign Matt Flamini!