Ed with Iain Macintosh (TNP Your English Kaki)

CHAMPIONS LEAGUE – Lucky Arsenal must strengthen soon by Iain Macintosh
August 16, 2008

I have to admit, I felt somewhat gutted reading Iain’s article in The New Paper after the recent win over Twente in the Champs League group stages. And then I went down to the Liz for the BPL opener against WBA, and whaddayanoe! There’s Iain slumped in front of the big screen.

I just had to go up to this bugger and give him a piece of my mind. So yeah, “Hi Iain, you were saying we’re lucky eh? What was that about?” Hehehe…I know, not exactly an ideal start to a conversation, but hey, Iain expected reactions to his article. For that, I guess he scored top marks from me.

Here’s an interesting quote -

Arsene Wenger’s men were beaten in every department, except of course for the one that counts; finishing.

Now, how often do we get the bull whenever we beat a team in every department except for the one that counts; finishing? And now that we won, we still suck. Ah, surely there needs to be some objectives in this statement.

I think it’s about effectiveness in the end. We do attempt to provide a feast of beautiful football through sleek passing, fluid movements and top speed counter attacks. Unfortunately, there are times when opponents find it too diabetic and resort to chopping off our pacy Gunners’ legs.

I remember during the “Invincible” season, it wasn’t just the fans (both Arsenal and non) that were enjoying the beautiful football. Even our opponents were anticipating a perfect through ball and quick exchange of one-twos, even putting themselves in the best spectator seats.

Iain brought up the question on replacements for the Gunners who saw the exit sign of the Emirates. Hlob, Flame-mini and Mad Jens were mentioned. While I (reluctantly) have to agree on the loss of Flame-mini, I think we can do well without the other two.

Surely, Jens have provided a superb service to us throughout his years, but it was really time for him to be phased out. Alex Hlob on the other hand, is just a bitchy zip. We’ve got Theo and Samir now who have shown the electricity they can bring to the midfield engine.

When Titi left, it gave much needed room for Cesc, Ade and the rest of the youth to shine. This I believe will be another opportunity for the young lads to prove their metal.

Samir Scores Debut BPL Goal - Is that Iain behind him?

Samir got off to a flying start by opening his BPL account on his debut within 4 minutes of the game. Again, the WBA game is used by the critics to say Arsenal has all promise but failed to fully deliver. Fact of the matter is, we got 3 points.

The name Samir Nasri will be the talk of the Arsenal critics for this season I foresee. Hlob, for one, has been more than adequately replaced. Let’s see how best our centre midfield shape up when Cesc returns.

I’m dying to finish this entry off to talk about the Devil who repented and joined the Gunners. Yes, Mikael Silvestre is now officially a Gunner (18), but I will also talk about my dearest who was a Devil and saw the light in the Gunner side of the park.

Na-na Na-Na, Na-na Na-na, Samir-ir, Nas-ri