How DOES he get the shirt on over his head?

I didn’t want him to take a penalty last night.  I didn’t want there to be the possibility of him suffering the infamous penalty agony, and when Di Natale missed his penalty, I felt ill.  Not because I wanted the Italians to win, far from it, but because of Cesc’s reaction to the Italian forward’s miss.  While all the other Spanish players celebrated euphorically, Cesc remained almost motionless, taut and anxious, as he had been all throughout the shoot-out.  That confirmed my fear: Cesc was to take the decisive, fifth Spanish penalty.

Both Fabregas and Santi Cazorla, the sparky Villarreal winger, looked sick with nerves.  When they stepped up to take their spot kicks, I thought the exact same thing as I had when De Rossi and Di Natale prepared to take theirs: they’re going to fluff it!  Thankfully, they didn’t.  Is that the mark of bottle, of strength of will?  When Michael Ballack was asked about taking the penalty against Man United he said he felt no pressure; it was his job.  Fabregas and Cazorla were certainly feeling the pressure, but they still held their nerve.

It would have been cruel for Spain to have gone out last night.  Fabregas, and another Villarreal man, the Brazilian born ball-winner Marcos Senna, were the outstanding outfield players.  At almost 32, Senna is a late bloomer.  He has developed into a wonderful player over the last few seasons, having the canny defensive instincts of Makelele and the power, tenacity and thunderbolt shooting of Essien.  He is the ideal foil for the numerous creative talents that Spain possess.

Last night, as in the first two games, the talents favoured by Aragones were the Barcelona pair Xavi and Iniesta.  Both are fabulous players, but once again they were below par, as they have been for the majority of the tournament.  Xavi was impeditive, unwilling the leave the comfort of his centre circle, while Iniesta for all his grafting, was too one-dimensional and too well shackled to make any impact.  Penalty scorers Cazorla and Fabregas were introduced on 59 minutes, long overdue.  Cazorla gives Spain natural width, and is a valuable commodity in a squad of central midfielders.  Fabregas played more successful forward passes than Xavi and Iniesta combined.  He runs the show like Xavi but also makes penetrative forward runs like Iniesta.  Once the pair were introduced, Spain began to look more dynamic, more dangerous.  Had Aragones kept Torres on instead of replacing him with Guiza, who never looked confident, Spain might have won the game in normal time.

Ultimately Italy, whose attacking ambitions were limited to using midfield runners to feed off knock-downs from the isolated Toni, succeeded in stifling Spanish efforts and made the game about one thing: Buffon vs Casillas. Right from the kick-off, their tactics admitted:  You’re better than us, so come and try to beat us.  They packed their midfield and focussed on restricting the Spaniards to passing the ball harmlessly in front of them.  When they did win possession, they pumped the ball forward to Toni and sent the occasional midfielder forward to support.  That way, it didn’t matter if they lost the ball again – most of their players would still be behind the ball.  As they had done in the 2006 final, the Italians gambled that in the shoot-out, Buffon would come out on top.  This time, it didn’t work.  France had Barthez, Spain have Casillas.   

So Spain are through to the semi-finals, where they will face Russia.  If they are to reach the final, they will have to beat a side inspired by its manager, the brilliant Guus Hiddink, and they will have to do so despite their own manager, the clownish Luis Aragones.  But with the drive of the new generation of Torres, Fabregas and Villa, they have a chance. 

As an aside, a special mention should go to Giorgio Chiellini, who was one of the few Italian players who could be proud of their performance last night.  Nominally a full-back, 23 year old Juventus man Chiellini was an imperious presence in the heart of the Italian defence.  Tall, strong and quick, comfortable on the ball and possessing a natural ability to read the game, he looks like a genuine successor to the great Paolo Maldini.

From arsenal.com:

Gunners' Greatest Players - 25. Ashley Cole 

It is perhaps surprising that Arsenal's fans have voted Ashley Cole as the 25th greatest player in the Club's history, but it reflects the high esteem in which the left back was held before his departure in the summer of 2006.

I'm almost speechless. Cashley Cunt has been placed ahead of the likes of Paul Merson, Alan Smith, Nigel Winterburn, Frank McLintock, Kenny Sansom, Ted Drake, George Graham, Alex James, Bob Wilson... the list goes on.

I knew there was a certain level of retardation prominent amongst my fellow Gooners when Nicolas Anelka was placed at number 29 ahead of most of the above, but I honestly didn't think it could be this bad.  Those of you who voted, I can only assume that you are utterly coked up to your eyeballs.

My world has been well and truly rocked.  I feel sorry for the arsenal.com employee who got lumped with writing the article on Cashley.  I imagine it felt like being made to eat a plateful of haggis, vomit it back up, eat the vomit and then be told to write a review of how wonderful the vomit tastes.  Ugh.

Now that the initial excitement of the return of football has worn off, I'm struggling to write stuff because frankly, I'm struggling to find anything of real interest at the moment. 

Maybe it's because I've missed so much of the Euros, which is in a large part due to the utterly poxy kick off times.  Anyone else noticing how most of the 'big' games have been scheduled to start at 5, while the boring shit gets the primetime slot?  5pm might be a good time for watching football if your idea of work involves standing in the dole queue or sitting in a student bar drinking Fosters, but I have a job. 

I enjoyed the 15 minutes I watched of tonight's game between the Turks and the Czechs.  I was going to watch the whole thing but the constant whistling of the Turkish fans (presumeably) and the constant moaning of Ray 'The Moan' Houghton put me off.  I decided to switch off and spend some time trimming my pubes, as that seemed like a more pleasant prospect.  I caught the last few minutes though, which was enough to see Chelsea's infallible keeper make another mess, a great Nihat finish and a Boro forward end up in goal. 

A shame it didn't go to penalties though, I bet Tuncay would have done better than Cech.

On the Arsenal front, signing Aaron Ramsey had me excited for about ten minutes.  Nice to get one over on the mancs, but really, it makes little difference to us at the moment.  We'll be sorted for central midfield in 2018 though.

Have you ever played soggy biscuit? David Villa is the soggy biscuit.  His hat-trick last night resulted in every Scouser, Gooner (myself excepted) and Spaniard exploding their summer supply of love-juice all over him. Pretty nasty stuff, so if you don’t mind I’d prefer to see Arsene stick with van Persie, Eduardo, Arsenal Legend™ Carlos Vela, and the rest of the Wengerboys.

As impressive as Spain were, how bad were the Ruskies? Their awfulness makes it even funnier to see a couple of gobshites in the Guardian today claiming that England’s failure to qualify was in fact, not due to the gross incompetency of Steve McClaren, but the down to the Bloody-Foreigners™. It was nice to see Cesc score his first international goal too, even if he was the benefactor of the 325th incorrect offside decision of Euro 2008.

Oh, and hooray for Zlatan Ibrahimovic. He may be a waste of space most of the time, but last night he helped defeat the anti-football menace, and for that, we are thankful.

Germany versus Poland was the best game I’ve seen of the Euros so far, as I missed the Portugal game.

I like this German team.  Typically German, they are an effective unit worth more than the sum of their individual parts.  Unusually for a German side they look frail at the back but exciting going forward.  Klose and Gomez look like a dangerous pairing, but they’ll need to find their shooting boots soon.  Fortunately for the misfiring pair, Lukas Podolski, the Polish born German, was on form last night.  He reminds me of van Persie; he’s a left-footed striker who excites, although mostly it’s because he looks like Robin.

Poland were poor defensively.  Beenhakker’s decision to play a high line against the pace of Podolski and Gomez was crazy.  Going forward, they looked useful.  The Brazillian born Pole Roger Guerreiro was a bright spark, as was the experienced winger Krzynówek.  Though quite how his name is pronounced ‘Jinovek’ is mystery to me.

The first two days made up the appetiser; tonight is the main course.  Romania take on France at 5pm while the Dutch entertain the world champions at 7.45. 

I hope the Romanians stuff the French.  I know I should feel an allegiance to the French camp, but their manager is a cretin and it’s hard to support a French side that has excluded Clichy and Sagna when carthorses like Abidal are included.  Here’s hoping Adrian Mutu scores a hat-trick and sniffs the byline, Fowler style. 

Recent reports suggest the injury prone Robben’s absence could mean that the injury prone Robin features.  I hope he tears the I-ties a new arsehole.  The Italians don’t look like the world's best under Donadoni, and they’ve lost Cannavaro.  Mind you, with a probable Dutch back-four of Bouma, Heitinga, Mathijsen and Ooijer, you can’t be too confident of anything, except perhaps some comedy defending. 

Finally, it’s great to see Eduardo hitting the treadmills.  Without him, the Croatians looked a bit shit.

GoonerDave emailed me last night with some news.  Ordinarily I might not post this due to the questionable validity of it, but Dave has been right before and as I don’t have anything to else to write about, I figure I might as well relay the info. 

Van my man,

It’s been a while, I know.  Sorry.  How’s life?  Hope you’ve shifted that rash.  I hate to say I told you so, but you were warned.  Anywho, I met my man in the know the other night and he told me about some of the moves KF has been making on behalf of AW.  I won’t bore you with the Nasri and AR details as they’re well known at this stage but also because something much bigger is afoot.

A lot of paperwork has been moving around recently, cryptically entitled ‘AFC IVF’.  Okay, so it’s not that cryptic - I’m sure you can guess what it means.  If you can’t, well, here's a hint: The FC part does NOT stand for ‘football club’.  Basically it's a contingency plan in the event that Blatter’s 6+5 makes it into legislation.  It won’t help in the immediate future but as we know, AW’s thinking is all about the long term.

His plan is to construct a new fertility clinic(!) just down the road from the ground.  The research says that there are loads of single birds in N7 who don’t have time to find a bloke, and want to get preggo.  The idea is that the clinic uses its supply of sperm samples to get them pregnant and in exchange, the women sign a contract specifying that if the resulting children become footballers, Arsenal have first option on taking them on youth contracts.  This is illegal at the moment, but that will change if the 6+5 comes in.

As I understand it, Arsenal have already spoken with a number of (ex) players about procuring supplies of their little swimmers.  TH14 is onboard as well as Spunky, Nutty, Chippy, Gus Caesar and Perry Groves (there’s a legal requirement to provide a minimum of six donors to choose from).  The board are trying to get Cesc to sign on too but his girlfriend has personal objections at the moment.  Vieira is also a possibility, but he’s stalling to see if Real Madrid make him a better offer.  At any rate, they reckon the first batch of little Thierrys will be ready to come through in the 2025/26 season.

It sounds outlandish I know, but I swear on my crown jewels, this is legit.
GD

Jens Lehmann finally completed his move back to the Bundesliga yesterday, signing for Stuttgart after spending five years with us. 

He has been a controversial and divisive character, full of quirks and flaws, but I'm sad to see him go.  Mad Jens played in every minute of our unbeaten league campaign, he helped win us our last major trophy - our 10th FA cup, and he got us to our first Champions League final.

I imagine most people when thinking about who Jens Lehmann was for Arsenal will recall his last minute penalty save against Riquelme, but I prefer the above save.  During the 2004/05 season Lehmann regularly received criticism despite having played the entirety of the unbeaten league campaign.  After Neil Mellor scored a late winner against us at Anfield, he was dropped for Almunia.  Almunia himself made mistakes, and when Lehmann came back into the team, he was immense.  That was the start of an incredible streak of form that lasted for more than 18 months and saw Lehmann crowned European Goalkeeper of the Year for the second time.  It is worth noting that only Oliver Kahn, Gigi Buffon and Peter Schmeichel have equaled or bettered that achievement. 

For those 18 months, Jens Lehmann was the best keeper in the world.  He should have received the World Goalkeeper of the Year award that year too, but Buffon got it on reputation.  Lehmann paid the price for being unpopular, for his notoriety as an eccentric hot-head.

The memory of Jens walking off the field in Paris, utterly inconsolable, is one of the worst I have as an Arsenal fan.  Jens had done as much as anyone to get us there, and it was terribly cruel.  Besides the Riquelme penalty save, the save against Raul at Highbury is the one that stands out from that run.  Diving backwards at full stretch, managing to tip the Spaniard's shot wide with his trailing hand.  Stunning.

For that run to end the way it did was tragic.  It was hard to see him on the losing side again in the World Cup semi finals later that summer, having once again performed heroics for an unfancied German side.  Still, even if he hadn't won trophies, he had won the plaudits, and they were richly deserved.  He won over his doubters at Arsenal, and he won over the German public, who wanted Kahn.  No mean feat.

So with that, I'd just like to say...

Danke, Jens.

I'm looking forward to the tournament start on the 7th.  Not because I'm expecting the football be anything special but because there is so precious little else to occcupy myself with, football-wise, at the moment. 

However, I can at least take solace in knowing that I'm not the only one struggling with dealing with the void.  I think it's getting to some people.  With regards to the Nasri saga, personally I feel that it has been going on so long that I'm actually bored of taking the piss out of it.

So, the Euros.  Despite having had the amazing clairvoyance to predict Jose Mourinho would take charge at Internazionale, I can't really see any side that looks a cut above the rest.  If I was a betting man, which I am occasionally, I'd probably go for Germany to win it with Mario Gomez scoring about 5 goals.

Mind you, they have a few players who lack match fitness, as well as general talent.

I always tend to fancy Spain, and with this looking like their strongest team in quite a while, I'm going to make this prediction:  They'll fuck it up again.  They won't get the best out of their star players.

Portugal will look great at times but ultimately fall short, and Ronaldo will cry (again).

One of Italy/France will not make it out of the group stages.  I'd be surprised if neither made it out but it could happen.  The Romanians are a good side.  The Dutch are okay.

Whatever happens, I intend to spend a lot of time in the pub, drinking Guinness and being overly-critical of the football - unless Robin or Cesc are involved, in which case it will of course be poetry in motion.