A Vancouver Gunner

Sad, sad, sad and then kinda happy: two 3-1 games in one day

 

11:30.  The time was set in my iPhone.  An alarm was programed.  I had a day off of work, all to watch Arsenal play the second leg of the Champions League semi-final against Manchester United.  Sure we were one goal down after we got ourselves spanked at Old Trafford, but it was only a goal and not even an away goal.  We've beat Man U before, and we've had our backs to the wall and still come out with victories before.  Remember Anfield '89 [yt]?  Sure you do, it's a classic game for the club.  The (original) film version of Fever Pitch is based around it [yt].  It's Arsenal's version of the 1994 Canucks Stanley Cup run, except at the end of the game Trevor Linden gets to lift the Cup.

Sorry I'm mixing my sports up there, but then again yesterday was the day for that.  With the Canucks having the first bit of playoff success that they've enjoyed for years the evening of the Arsenal game held a Canucks game too.  First though there was Arsenal.

We started off brightly, pressing in the way that the team failed to back in Manchester.  However an early defensive mistake from the young Kieran Gibbs gifted Park Ji-Sung a goal.  Gibbs basically just fell over, which while I know he was the youngest player on the pitch but I'd have hoped he was past the toddler age.  Then Ronaldo scored a really good free kick, and with that Manchester United were up 3-0 on aggregate.

The game ended 3-1, 4-1 on aggregate.  It was painful. 

We can pick over what happened to our season later, but it's clear that our team is just not good enough.  We should be challenging for first place in the Premier League and for glory in Europe.  You can't fault Arsene Wenger for not buying well during the January transfer window since Arshavin seems like a great buy and besides anyone he picked up would end up cup tied in Europe anyway.  However more should have been done to build the team in the summer, and Arshavin should have played against Chelsea in the FA Cup, so we still had a shot at some silverware this year.

The autopsy on the season will begin soon enough.

The rest of Vancouver was celebrating.  The Canucks won 3-1 in Chicago to take a 2-1 series lead.  Don't worry, soon the rest of Vancouver will know my pain, the Canucks will break their hearts.  I've seen this movie before [yt].

Well that was just a kick in the balls: Man U 1 - Arsenal 0

Well that was a blow to the balls wasn't it?  I took a long lunch so that I could go home and watch the game on TSN, only for Manchester United to score the game's only goal within the first few minutes.  It became so painful to watch that I slunk off into another room to work on printing addresses onto envelopes for wedding invitations, and only listening to the game.

Apparently my not watching the game did not trigger a dramatic Arsenal comeback and the game ended at one - nil to United.  The fact that Arsene Wenger is talking up the fact that United did not score more than one as being a plus tells you how bad this was.  It could have easily ended with them putting another two or three past us and if it had not been for the heroics of Manuel Almunia who made a few great saves to keep us in the game.

It shows how much of our recent domestic victories have been because of the addition of Andrei Arshavin [wp] to the team during the January transfer window.  Without him the team really had to depend on Cesc Fabregas to create what few chances we had. 

We've got one game to turn that around back home in London, but if we don't win that we're not getting any silverware this season. There's months to go over what went wrong this year, and what we need to be a contender next season.  We just need to win next week's second leg, and win it by a score that nullifies the away goals rule.

It's not going to be easy.

Where to watch Arsenal v Manchester United in Vancouver and a bit on the Whitecaps

I've been getting emails, and comments on the blog about where in Vancouver to watch tomorrow's Champions League game against Manchester United.  It's being shown on TSN at 11:30 Pacific Time, so pretty much any bar or resturant that has sports on the television should be okay.  I don't know of any specific Arsenal supporters pubs, or even Vancouver based Arsenal supporters groups, so I can't really be more specific than "anywhere with a television."

In the past I've watched games at the Dover Arms Pub on Denman street [da].  I've never been there for a match, but I also like the Library Square Pub downtown [ls].  However they do have a link on their site to the Manchester United Supporters Club of Canada [muck], so they may not be as Gunner friendly as you'd hope.  Speaking of Mancs, they're meeting at the Lamplighter on Gastown for the match, so if you fancy being able to taunt them after a Fabregas hat-trick then I'd suggest going there.

In non-Arsenal news I attended my first Whitecaps game of the season on Saturday at Swangard Stadium.  I've got a full match review on Metroblogging Vancouver [mbv].  The Whitecaps of course will be making the big jump to the Major League Soccer (MLS) in 2011 and my seasons tickets have me inline for tickets to the big leagues.  Which should be exciting.

Good luck finding games.  If you do find a place great to watch the game let me know.  I'll probably end up at Shenanigans a pub on Robson Street because it's close to work and I'll be able to pop out for my lunch break there.

One all leaves us in good standing for the home leg

Because we're not Manchester United the Arsenal versus Villarreal game wasn't shown live on TSN. The Man U. versus Porto game was. Rather than show ours right after the Man U game ended the fine folks at TSN decided to save the game for a very special time slot, 3 am PST. I had intended to set my DVR to record it anyway, but it's hard to go the entire day without any Arsenal news, so by the time I got home from work I already knew the score.

The one all draw leaves us looking good for the second leg back in London because of the Champions League rule on away goals. A win or a goaless draw would see us going through to the next round.

Lastly a quick note, the Whitecaps season opener is this weekend, but I'll be in Victoria for a wedding. I broke down and bought season tickets again this year, and this time I'm going to try to get to more of the games than I have in the past. With the news that Vancouver is going to be getting an MLS team in 2011, things are looking up for local football fans.

Champions League Draw: Arsenal did well

I don't really have the time to comment much on it today, but it looks like we did okay in the draw for the next round of the Champions League.  I was thinking we'd get Liverpool, but we avoided the English teams and ended up with Villarreal.  That draw works out nicely for us, and it probably the easiest team in the final batch save perhaps from Porto who'll be clobbered by Manchester United.

It's a little deja vu for us, having played Villarreal in 2006, the year we got to the final and lost out to Barcelona.  The draw and the dates of the games after the jump.

It's not safe for work when you Google Freddie Ljungberg

The MLS expansion team The Seattle Sounders played the opening game of Major League Soccer's game in Seattle last night.  The Sounders played in the United Soccer Leagues (USL) first division last year with the Vancouver Whitecaps, and so they've shown that making the jump to the MLS is possible.

They've also got former Gunner winger Freddie Ljungberg on the team.  Now because of Ljungberg's second job as a Calvin Klein underwear model, doing a Google image search for the picture to the right turns up more images of him looking very sexy and very nearly naked than it does playing football.  If you're worried about your sexual identity, this is probably not a search you'd want to do at work.

Ljungberg did not start in the first game, and is currently suffering from another in a series of injuries that plagued him in his last few seasons at Arsenal and his brief spell at West Ham United.  When he's fit though he's still a great player.  Arsenal fans may remember his role in scoring a beautiful goal in the 2003 FA Cup to help us sink Chelsea [bbc].

He was a great Gunner, and if he gets healthy I'm thinking of buying a ticket and seeing the Sounders play one of their home games this season.

Meanwhile I feel that maybe I was a bit hard on the MLS, and Vancouver's expansion into the league for 2011, yesterday.  My point was that we've kind of seen with Beckham going back to Italy and by all accounts playing an important role in the AC Milan squad, that despite the hype the MLS is not near the level of European leagues. 

Writing in the Guardian [lg] today Lawrence Donegan pointed out that simply bringing in stars is not going to be what grows the game in North America:

"...so-called "stars" like David Beckham are a good thing, as long as they are viewed in the same way people view the prospect of Mary J Blige turning up in the middle of U2 concert to sing One – it's a pleasant surprise but it's not why you would buy the past and future CDs.

If soccer is to establish itself as a major sport in the States, it will do so incrementally, by growing the grassroots, building stadiums solely for the purpose of soccer (and creating the intimate yet noisy atmosphere required to inject a sense of occasion) and expanding slowly across the continent by introducing new teams in the major cities.

Most of pre-season coverage in the 2009 MLS has centred on one such expansion team, the newly founded Seattle Sounders, which counts the comedian Drew Carey among its owners and the former Arsenal winger Freddie Ljungberg among its players. This week it was announced that the Vancouver Whitecaps, backed with money from, among others, the NBA legend Steve Nash, will join the league in 2011. Portland will soon follow – establishing a three-way geographical rivalry of the kind that the league hopes will persist long after Beckham's flight to Milan has been forgotten."

As a fan of the sport I should be more supportive of it.  MLS soccer in Vancouver is only good for fans like myself, with or without David Beckham. 

Don't worry, I'm still alive. My blogging has been a little slow across the board in 2009 and with Arsenal's season being the kind that's lead me to spending my mornings crying into my pillow, I've neglected this blog most of all.  I haven't posted since November, which was about the last time anyone thought that we had a serious shot at winning the league this season, and frankly it's been kind of downhill from there.  Oh we're still in with a chance to pick up either the FA Cup or the Champions League trophy this season, but we've got some stiff competition for both.

In the FA Cup we're meeting our derby rivals Chelsea in the next round.  We beat them back in November, shortly after I stopped posting.  That was at Stamford Bridge and we'd come back from a 1-0 deficit after halftime thanks to two goals from Robin Van Persie.  That's right, A Vancouver Gunner the only blog that brings you match results four months after they've occured.  Let's see the Arseblogger [asb] do that!

The point is that we've shown we can beat Chelsea, so it's not a game we should be too worried about.  Granted they're a good team, a rich team and a team that's certainly capable of beating anyone but the one good thing about Arsenal this year is that we've managed to get good results against good teams.  We've shown we can do well against Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool, it's just the teams we really should be beating that we have trouble with.

We don't know who we're going to get in the draw for the next round of the Champions League but most likely it's going to be one of the other English teams.  I really feel a rematch from last year with Liverpool coming on, don't you?

Meanwhile there's big news for the Vancouver football scene, with an ownership group announcing that they are bringing a Major League Soccer (MLS) franchise to Vancouver [mbv].  There's been talk of Vancouver getting an MLS team for a few years now [mbv] and while I'm not 100% convinced that this city has the soccer loving base to support it the example of Toronto FC shows that a major league team can work in Canada [mbv].  The team looks like it's going to replace the Whitecaps, since one of the members of the ownership group is Greg Kerfoot who owns the team.  As much as I hope the city can support an MLS team, I know it can't support the Whitecaps and an MLS team.

Hopefully they keep the name Whitecaps. 

More posts soon.  And sorry for the delay.

I need medication after a few weeks of Arsenal's ups and downs

Alright I'll admit that it's been awhile since I've posted. The last few weeks have been up and down for us Arsenal fans with the team throwing away points against Tottenham and Stoke, while managing to beat Manchester United on the weekend. After everyone, including me, declared that there was no way that Arsenal was going to win the Premier League title this year they're back in it thanks to the win over United.

Forgive me if I was convinced that the only way the Gunners would be winning the league this season was in my game of FIFA '09, where I've created myself as a high scoring striker. I'm still playing in the reserves, but I'll tell you I think my performances have made Arsene Wenger take notice. Now if only...

Wait, we should probably return to talking about the real Arsenal and the virtual one that resides within my XBox 360. Apologies.

In the real world things were looking bleak for the Gunners. Pretty much everyone, their dog and their dog's mom, were ragging on the manager because the lost points were almost all down to things that could have been prevented by a few key purchases during the summer transfer window. I bemoaned our lack of signings back in August [av], and I certainly was not alone. We still look like we need someone imposing in the centre of midfield, a Patrick Viera type, and someone else in the centre of defence. Since everyone else with a blog said pretty much exactly the same thing, to see those weaknesses end up making the team drop two goals in the last minutes of the game to Tottenham, everyone decided that they were better suited to running the club than Wenger. Especially those of us who are also promising young virtual strikers.

We don't know what goes on in the halls of the Emirates Stadium, so it's hard to say why Wenger made no significant purchases after bringing in Samir Nasri, who himself was brought in to replace the departing Hleb. Chances are that an attempt was made to make a more significant buy, but that nobody was on the market that fit into the team dynamic. Patrick Vieras don't just fall from the sky like Newton's apple.

Nasri however has proven to be a great buy however. As I said he was brought in largely to replace Hleb, but so far he's been more a replacement for Robert Pires than Hleb, and that's a good thing. Arsenal have often missed the scoring threat that Pires used to offer, and the width. Hleb never scored on any consistent basis, and the fact that Nasri managed to score two against United on Saturday only makes me love him more. If we can just add some muscle to the midfield, then we've got something potentially awesome brewing with Cesc Fabregas, Nasri and [insert name of midfield dominating player here].

The Arsenal kids are more than alright

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here's very little I've got to say today, or rather have time to say today, other than... Holy Shit! Now we all know that the Carling Cup isn't exactly a prize that Arsenal goes after. We tend to field a youth team and while we always do pretty good in the competition that way it's not a trophy that Arsene Wenger really worries about winning.

Still when our youth team can dismantle Sheffield United 6-0 like they did today [gf] it's a pretty nice sign of things to come for us. Carlos Vela and Jack Wilshere are two players who I think will be quality for the senior team in the years to come. The future looks bright for us with players like this coming up through the ranks and challenging for roles.

Granted Sheffield United is a Championship team and not in the Premier League this season, but still neither is our youth team.

Four goals, two points and England's new savior

I'm blogging from my iPhone today as I'm on an extended weekend without my Macbook, having spent a few days in Tofino and last night in Victoria.

Arsenal though managed a great return from the international break by winning a tricky fixture away to Blackburn 4-0. It was the sort of game in which it would have been easy to drop points so well done to the squad to record a solid victory. With Liverpool beating Manchester United earlier that puts us in a decent position in the league.

All Arsenal talk has of course been of Theo Walcott whose hat-trick for England helped the national team defeat Croatia on the weekend. Like Wayne Rooney four or five years ago he's now meant to save England and lead them to World Cup glory.

Me? I'd just be happy for him to nick us a few goals and a trophy this season.