Fulham 2 Arsenal 1

ANOTHER DAY, another defeat. But this time there could be no excuses. Sure, Thierry Henry was quite clearly onside when he scored with what was frankly a rather good finish early in the second half. But that should not disguise what was in truth a hideous performance and a deserved defence.

News that both full-backs were being rested and so too was Cesc Fabregas hardly inspired confidence pre-match. Did Eboue and Clichy, both the epitome of youthful athleticism, really need resting? Or was Arsene intent on making some kind of point over his sense of injustice about our crowded fixture list? A rest for Cesc was understandable and I predicted as much yesterday. But why leave yourself in a situation where you have to pick sixth choice Alex Song?

Watching last night, we maintained the inability to get stuck in. What grates most about that is that being supremely artistic, skillful and talented is incredibly difficult. Where as getting stuck in is so simple, everybody can do it. Even we did it last season as we steam rollered our way to a Champions League final. So why not now? My only conclusion is that it’s importance is not stressed enough in training. And that’s a great shame, because curing that particular malaise would allow us to grind out those results when we haven’t played well. I agree that buying one seriously hard tackling midfielder would be a help. But it will be the whole team cracking the psychological barrier of how to fight that will really make the difference.

The other great problem last night was that our confidence was quite clearly shot, probably not helped by conceding yet another early goal. On this occasion the outfield players’ defending was not that bad - Jens had stupidly let himself get distracted with earlier pushing and shoving in the box. Suddenly, doing the most simple things was beyond us. Control was wretched, passing wayward, decisions ill thought out and long balls resorted to. You only had to look at the countless yellow cards we picked up. They were all deserved and yet none were what I would call dirty. Instead they were the ill judged challenges of out of form players - very similar to the two tackles that got Gilberto sent-off at Newcastle last season.

We gave ourselves hope with Van Persie’s excellent free-kick - though it was no surprie we only won it after some poor Hleb control. With the offside goal and Walcott hitting the post we probably just about merited a second goal. And yet our defending was shocking throughout and it was a surprise we kept them down to two. Our back four more a zig-zag than a straight line, as Senderos’ sending-off epitomised. My stream only came to life after 25 minutes so I won’t do playa ratings. Suffice to say, almost everyone was pretty poor. I would say that Djourou fills me with greater confidence than Senderos and that Hleb and Rosicky were very poor. Toure was particularly off colour.

Watching your team struggle is never going to be fun for any fan. And yet I sense for us it is that little bit more gut wrenching. Why? Because it was no fluke that we came within 10 minutes of winning the Champions League. Because it was no fluke that we outplayed and beat Man United at Old Trafford. Because it is no fluke that when we do get it together we look like we could take anyone. The table doesn’t lie. And yet we are capable of so much more than what we are showing at the moment.

I don’t follow the argument that we are a million miles off challenging. And those who are beginning to seriously doubt Arsene are probably the same ones who were seriously doubting him a year ago and the same ones who seriously doubted him when he claimed we could go unbeaten. One day the doubters might be proved right. But in the meantime Arsene deserves our absolute support.

The question now is whether last night represented some kind of rock bottom. Arsene’s post match comments were slightly worryingly defiant - though I for one am not convinced what he says in public is the same as what he says in private. Either way, I think the players need to have a proper sit down and realise things are not right. Unfortunately, there is very little time between now and Saturday. But something has to be done because as things stand, you have to say Spurs are favourites for Saturday.

I DON’T know about you but tomorrow night’s game at Fulham can not come soon enough for me. Anger from the Bolton game lingers and another match sounds like the best way to dispel it. I think the anger stems from the fact that like most people I hate cheats. The difference is that when I say cheats I don’t only mean divers. I also mean the players who set out deliberately to sneekily foul others. Those cheats are cowards if you ask me and if there is one thing I hate more than them it is when their indiscretions are indulged hopelessly by the pundits and utterly ignored by the referees who are blind to what is going on.

That is why I loathed Ruud Van Nistelrooy and that is why I loathe Kevin Davies. Frankly, I loathe him so much that were I playing tomorrow night and were Sean Davis still at Fulham I’d probably go for him, having found him guilty of association by his similar sounding name. Of course, I’m not playing tonight and Sean Davis is not at Fulham, so it’s a mute point.

But it does bring us nicely on to the Fulham game and for me the very worst thing we can do is to think: “It’s an away game, it’s in London and even when we had the worst away record known to man last season we still managed to spank Fulham 4-0 at their place.” That attitude, pure and simple, will get us a defeat. We need the first goal, pure and simple.

I’m hopeful that the return of Henry, Van Persie, Rosicky and Hleb (who was on the bench at Bolton) will make some difference. The way I see it, we have 11 what I would call A list players: Jens, Toure, Gallas, Lauren, Gilberto, Cesc, Hleb, Rosicky, Freddie, Van Persie and Henry. Just five of them started on Saturday and while I have few qualms seeing any of the youngsters in our squad in the first team, a side that contains: Eboue, Senderos, Clichy, Walcott, Flamini and Adebayor has something of a Carling Cup whiff about it. I’m not saying we are not capable of playing awfully even when our A listers are fit and nor were the kids particularly at fault on Saturday - it’s just that so many of them missing can leave us missing a little something.

For the record, I reckon Henry, Van Persie, Hleb and Rosicky will all start, with Gilberto and probably Cesc but possibly Flamini if Arsene decides the Spaniard needs a break before next week’s thre massive games. The defence, I presume and hope, will stay the same.

ARSENE WENGER needs to make a new rule that should be as routine as turning up on time for training: At away games, all players must go over to the fans and applaud them for being bothered to come along, whatever the final result. And like turning up late for training, failure to do so should be punishable with a fine.

It may seem draconian, but after Saturday’s post-match display I think it necessary if the players don’t end up testing the patience of their most loyal fans. And it matters to supporters - I mentioned it, VitalArsenal mentioned it and Arseblog correspondents mentioned it among many others.

I don’t get to many away games but I do pay attention to the size and loudness of Arsenal’s away followings and I can’t believe that we have had many better turn-outs than that at the Reebok for yonks. What, with the game being on TV, Bolton being a shit hole, our awful record there, the late kick-off time, the £39 tickets for most of us, the lengthened London - Manchester train journey on the weekend, roadworks etc etc etc, not to mention we are hardly firing on all cylinders at the moment, this fixture hardly counted as can’t miss. In fact it was unappealing enough for 4,000 Bolton fans to stay at home, plus the ones who could have snapped up the extra tickets we were given.

And yet we had a massive following and one that was singing before the players even came out to warm-up and were still singing three minutes into injury time. I, like many others, knew that if I left with five minutes left I would miss the logjam to get out of the car park and miss the queue to get onto the motorway. A good forty minutes I could have saved. But the vast majority of us stayed and suffered. And if anyone else is at all like me, sitting there listening to the Bolton chants, getting ’sporting’ handshakes from tossers outside the ground and hearing the gloating on the radio as you sat stationary in the car park was all part of experiencing defeat.

It is true that fans are incredibly, incredibly fickle. But it’s not true that we are completely fickle. The players should remember that next time they hear groaning at Ashburton. And if it seems that Walcott and Gilberto are being given a little more slack then they might want to wonder why.

BY DEFINITION, a serial underachiever will occasionally have a great day. If they did not they would just be rubbish, as opposed to being a serial underachiever. Yesterday Nicolas Anelka had one of those days.

This report is divided into three sections and all in all it’s a little long. Apologies. My playa ratings can be found separately here.

Right, for me there are three reasons for us to be infuriated post Bolton:
1) Our first half refusal to get stuck in and our generally abject defending.
2) Bolton’s incredible fortune and our incredible misfortune at the Reebok - we have now hit wood five times in the past two fixtures with their keeper nowhere near the ball.
3) The sheer, utter ineptitude of Mike Dean over Kevin Davies and what was probably not clear on TV but apparent to all of us at the ground.

1) Our ineptitude

How, in the name of humanity, could we let them score that opening goal?

Did nobody tell the defence that Bolton like a corner? It was a hideous start to the game. And I’m afraid that despite a couple of decent moments, it epitomised our first half. Our reticence to just put in a tackle was extraordinary. I swear that between something like the 18th and the 43rd minutes we did not concede one foul. That just can’t be right.

I’m at a loss to explain it. Yes, Bolton moved the ball well. But they are not United, Liverpool, Madrid or Juventus. Pressure them and they hoof. We seemed absurdly in awe of them. What said it more than anything was that barely once in the game do I remember the Bolton crowd being at all incensed by a tackle from an Arsenal player. I’m not saying adopt their tactics, but there is a middle ground and we just seemed to tackle not only far less than them, but far less than we ordinarily do.

For the second goal, Kolo Toure will wonder why he let Nicholas Anelka inside on his right foot like that. There was little reason to suppose he would score that goal but good housekeeping says he should have been shown wide earlier than that. In the second half Bolton had two moments of any merit. The first was when Eboue inexplicably headed on their free-kick and Jens was forced to save very well from Anelka. The other was the third goal - a touch and go offside. God only knows what the rule is now because it changes almost monthly but what is beyond doubt is that besides it being a very well taken goal, a big part of the reason Anelka got ahead of Toure was because he started ahead of him. Simple as that.

The funny thing was that it was not a case of a lack of effort like it was at Liverpool last season. We just seemed to have this mental block in our head. There was a moment right at the end where Cesc clattered in to one of their players with a hard but legal sliding challenge. I can’t remember another one.

2) Our misfortune

Attack wise, we were excellent in the second half and hugely unfortunate not to salvage anything from the game. I heard one or two people on the radio bemoaning us for trying to walk it in but for me there was none of that. We took the game to Bolton, looked very dangerous and, crucially, created real chances.

Three times we hit woodwork and three times Jaaskelainen did not have a prayer. Had Fred’s header at 2-1 gone in then you would have backed us to win the game. Ultimately, we were pretty unfortunate - a bit like we were last season at the Reebok when for all our wretchedness, Henry hit the post twice and we had a goal harshly ruled out.

It was telling that the vast majority of the Gooners present last night stayed right until the end and disappointed as we were with the first half, we could have no complaints with the attacking performance in the second. We had an enormous following at the game - 40 percent of the lower tier behind the goal and the whole of the upper tier. We had snapped up the extra tickets Bolton had given us - doing them a favour too because it meant there were only 3,500 empty seats, all of them in their end.

It was just a shame that so few of the players took the time to acknowledge the support at the end (Walcott, Flamini and Gilberto excluded). It’s fair enough if they are lost in their own agonised thoughts. But if, like Adebayor, you were able to swap shirts and embrace one of their side, it’s not asking too much to recognise the fans who have not only spent a fortune coming miles but could also have made the long journey back to London a bit shorter by leaving early and avoiding the crush to get out of the car park but chose not to.

That said, I can hardly complain. Once out of the absurdly overpriced (£6 up here normally gets you a day’s parking) and terribly designed (they only built this stadium a few years ago) car park, it was 20 minutes back to the glory of my current Oldham abode.

3) What TV didn’t show of Mike Dean

When Kevin Davies made that push, for me he was just laughing in the face of football’s law makers. The rules rightly allow discretion for a referee so that in certain circumstances they are not obliged to punish contact below the face with a red card. But they do not say contact below the face can not result in a red card. The push was hard, deliberate, unprovoked and premeditated from Davies, all part of his game plan. It said to Mike Dean: “You’re not brave enough to give me the red I deserve.” And Dean obliged. If Cesc deserved to go at Everton last season and Di Canio got 12 games for doing the same to a referee, how could Davies only get a yellow?

But let’s imagine for a second the push itself only merited a yellow. Well the initial tackle was undoubtedly worth one too. He left his foot in and deliberately raked it straight into Eboue’s ankle. Mike Dean was perfectly placed to see it and if he genuinely thought it was not deliberate then he should just quit the game. But after sending Davies off once this season he didn’t have the balls to do it again. And I should say that while TV viewers would not have seen it, there had already been other occasions where Davies had done exactly the same. Don’t get me wrong, I have no objection to a physical approach and I readily accept we are far too brittle (as I said above). But there is a difference and the likes of Davies hide behind the bullshit Man United used against us for so long until Van Nistelrooy’s outragous assaults could finally no longer be ignored by the SKY cameras. Of course Davies will be indulged to the hilt by the likes of Alan Shearer on MoTD. Davies should have gone, pure and simple. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Another major gripe with Dean was how he dealt with “having the advantage” incidents. The most obvious, but not the only one, was in the first few minutes where Eboue skinned his man and was cynically hauled back by the defender who just grabbed at whatever he could get a hold of. Eboue (who probably did make too much of the Davies push) could not have avoided going down but this time got straight up and continued the play. We still had a decent situation but it was not as good as had Eboue simply skinned his man and sent in the cross, as he would have done without the foul. In any case, a corner resulted but for some reason Mike Dean took no action against the defender.

For me, it showed an extraordinary failure of refereeing. Yellow and red cards are basically given for one of two reasons: to punish deliberate foul play or as some kind of recompense to the opposition when an accidental foul prevents play from advancing. Had the foul in the Eboue case been accidental, then Mike Dean would have been utterly correct to award a corner and not to punish the player. But if it is a deliberate foul, what difference in the world does it make that Eboue stayed on his feet and carried on? Had Eboue continued even after receiving a forearm smash from the defender, it would be inevitable that the referee would take action.

This may all sound a little petty but it happened more than once (another occasion late in the game on Walcott springs to mind) and was an integral part of Bolton’s approach to stopping us. As I said, the same used to happen when we went to Old Trafford and everybody turned a blind eye. Rough and tumble is all and fair but rubbish refereeing is not. And though it may not have looked it on TV, to many of us at the ground Mike Dean was utterly hopeless.

All in all a very disappointing night.

My match report can be found here.

Jens: Faultless for the goals, he made an excellent save from Anelka in the second half. 7

Eboue: Some fairly shoddy defending at times if truth be told. Almost seemed to get in the way for the second goal and made too many mistakes, including flicking on that header in the second half for the great save from Jens from what was a fairly average free-kick. All that said, it’s easy to forget just how much he brings to our game going forward. 5.5

Clichy: Not his best game. Hesitant at times and made wrong decisions when defending. But going forward in the second half he did very well on the whole, even if a couple of his late crosses went long. 5.5

Kolo: It’s hard to have a go at the guy as he is normally excellent and always gives his all. But he will know he made things a little easy for Anelka on the second goal and was technically beaten by the same player for the third. 6

Senderos: A little hesitant at times and to troubled by the Bolton approach. But otherwise did OK. 6

Flamini: Is normally very good at keeping within his abilities but at the Reebok he occasionally tried more than what he was capable of. Like the rest of the team, did not get the tackles in he should have. 6

Gilberto: Other than being part of the general, almost inexplicable refusal to make a proper tackle, he did alright. Great work for the goal and was neat and focused when on the ball. 6.5

Cesc: Finished the game very strongly and was integral to our recovery in the second half. Must take collective responsibility for the failings of the first half but really glued us together as we attacked. His late shot that cannoned off the bar (that’s two in a week) epitomised his second half. 7

Freddie: You can’t really fault his effort, though again he was part of the general malaise where we chased but didn’t properly challenge. Some decent moments in the second half but was guilty of trying things that we as fans all know is beyond him now. A couple of times he went down the left and tried to shift the ball onto his left foot with the great move he showed at Anfield for that magnificent Pires goal many a year ago. But we know, and so should he, that those days are long gone. 5.5

Adebayor: Did reasonably well, though had he been clinical early on the game would have been completely different. Very unlucky with the shot that hit the post. 6.5

Walcott: Yes, there were things that didn’t come off. But it’s far more important that some stuff is excellent rather than everything is average. Overall, he was very good in my opinion. Got himself in on numerous occasions and put in some decent crosses - the one where Freddie hit the post stands out. 7.5

Subs:

Baptista: Did alright, driving us forward decently but seems a little wayward at times. Still settling in. 6

Hleb: Pretty limp for the third goal and didn’t exactly look super motivated when he came on. 5