ManU 2 - 1 Arsenal Not What I Wanted to See

We we did score more goals at Old Crapford that ManU did seeing that Diaby headed the second one in and Alumnia gave away the other one on a stupid call. If Cesc were there, this match would have been a completely different one.

We really did look to be the better team, but when it came down to the final score we didn't get the points. I felt bad for the boys and they worked the ball hard and had some good opportunities, just gave up a couple that hurt.

We really were missing a dominant player in the midfield for this match. Gallas and Vermaelan both played really well in the back and had it not been for a couple silly mistakes, Gallas would have been MOTM with Arshavin following it up. But instead, we hang our heads and go back to London looking at those idiots from Spurs in first place. Yes, it's early, but still, I hate to see them at the top of the chart ever.

Heads up boys, we will get them this weekend!

Old Sol Moves To Notts County

Sol Campbell spent a lot of good years at Arsenal before his breakdown that sent him to Portsmouth. Prior to that he did some time at Spurs, but we won't talk about that part of his career.

Sol is now 34 and has become a free agent this year and has signed a deal with Notts County for 5 years. Notts Director of Football is good old Sven, the former manager of England. To Notts this is a big signing. For sol it's a potential comeback to an average few years playing for Portsmouth.

Sol had some great years at Arsenal and was on the top of his game. He was part of the back line that had 49 unbeaten and was always solid. So I wish him luck with his new place and hope he can carry them on to promotion.

The Damned United - 2009 Movie Review

Directed by Tom Hooper, this is the story of Brian Clough's reign as Leeds United manager for all of 44 days. Michael Sheen plays Brian Clough. The previous manager Don Revie(Colm Meaney) had achieved national success wiuth the ream and was now asked to take the head job as England Manager. So in comes Brian Clough to take over and become the next biggest thing or not. Clough starts his job by taking an Yorkshire Television interview and states that Leeds were cheats and thugs and he's there to change their style of football.

Warning: There are spoilers if you don't know the story and don't want to, stop now.

The story jumps back and forth in time telling the story of Brian's early days with Derby County, working with Peter Taylor(Timothy Spall) to take them from the bottom of the 2nd league to the top of the first division. Clough is a man of many words and doesn't care who he's talking to, he says what he wants. This was all started when Derby selects Leeds in the 1967 FA Cup Draw at home. He gets the place ready to show his first division opponents that he is ready to have them as guests. so what happens, they lose 2-0 and Don Revie walks out snubbing Clough. From that point he was determined to get to first division and beat the pants off Leeds and stick it to Revie.

Flash forward in time and you see that he gets off on the wrong foot with the team right off the start in the Charity Shields match and can't seem to get his team to show any respect for him as a coach. This struggle will end up driving him out the door only 6 weeks after taking the team.

So back to the success he created at Derby. He went behind the chairman's back to aquire players and spend money the club didn't have. He took the team from nothing and made them the champions of first division. Clough did this all with Peter Taylor, who some say was really the brains of the operation. The breaking point was when Leeds was in town for a match and Derby had a mid-week semi-final cup tie with Juventus. The Chairman question why Clogh was playing his best against Leeds and not saving them for the Juve match. Well Leeds took out several key players and Derby went on to lose to Juventus and Clough looked bad to the Chairman and the board. Clough offered up his and Taylors resignation if the board didn't change the chairman. The board accepted and it backfired on Clough. He was now out of a job and screwed Peter Taylor along with him.

The only job offered to Clough was the Brighton & Hove Albion position, which he and Taylor accepted. Taking a chance to bring a 3rd division club to the top. While on holiday before the job started word came out that Revie was now England Manager and someone from Leeds asked Clough to take over. He had a falling out with Taylor and went to do it on his own. This became the start of the down fall, "The Damned United". The players wouldn't listen. His top players were hurt and the captain was suspended for violent conduct. so he had no change. Leeds players were looking for him to scout matched and train them based on the style of each team. Clough thought that if you trained his way it didn't matter who you played. We the team turned on him and only 44 days later he was out.

The story finished it up with Clough getting blindsided with an interview that included Don Revie to be critical of him. The two went at each other with words. Clough basically said he was doomed from the start because they wouldn't listen to him and that Revie was sabotaging him from the start. Revie asked why Clough disliked him so much and he told him about the 1967 FA Cup Snubbing and Revie tried to play it off like he didn't know that he was the manager. All in all they walked off saying nothing more.

The film itself then goes on to show Clough getting on his knees and begging Taylor for forgivness. He accepts and they join forces to take Nottingham Forest to the lead championship as well as two European titles. Clough and Taylor really were a great team. The success they had was amazing. The film ends with a quote "the best manager that England national side never had". Clough passed away in September of 2004, but will always be remembered as on of the best English coaches.

To me giving you the summary is no more that telling you what happened historically at the time. This film was done really well for a period piece done in 2009 portraying the mid-sixties through early seventies. The story may have been embellished a bit, but really for the most part is right on with how it went down. Brian Clough was a successful manager, but had no chance when he took the Leeds position, but he still fought and stuck to his style.

I think the acting was done well for this film, Colm Meaney does a great job being a prick and Michael Sheen is great and being the arrogant non-stop talking version of Clogh who won't let you get a word in. This is a good movie and well worth watching. You really don't have to be a Clough fan or Revie fan, just watch it for the story and the acting, everyone does a good job.

Rating: 4 1/2 out of 5

Arsenal 4-1 Portsmouth - Next Up Celtic 2nd Leg

Diaby came out on fire in the 18th and 22nd minute as Arsenal took on Portsmouth for their home opener at The Grove. Portsmouth came back and scored one to make it 2-1 when Kaboul scored. Right now we are on track to have 38 goals scored on us, but fortunately we are on track to score about 120. Gallas put one home in the second half followed by Ramsey to finish this one off 4-1. Overall a good performance once again by Arsenal.

Wednesday we take on Celtic in the 2nd leg of the Champions League qualifier. We need to make sure we at least draw or lose 0-1 in order for us to move on. Hopefully we will see a 2 or 3 goal victory, but we do have ManU coming up Saturday in a big match for us.

Another big win for Arsenal and let's hope the next two are just as big.

"You Can't Have Him....."

As The Who's song Magic Bus goes - it seems that Barca won't give up and want our "Magic Bus", Cesc Fabregas. They are now claiming that Arsenal have struck a deal to sign him for next season. I'm so tired of all the BS these guys spew. Joan Laporta is in his last year in charge and is making a final effort to make it look like he will get Cesc. The offer they say is £30 million.

I say we do as we said and we start to go after Messi and stick it to him. Why do we let these clubs bully us around and cause misery and unrest.

Cesc bestter still be in an Arsenal uniform this next year. I did like Barca as a Spanish team, but they are starting to fall down my list. Laporta can go to hell and stop talking to the press. You suck dude.

First Leg Champions League: Celtic 0 - 2 Arsenal

With a few minutes left in the first half, Cesc Fabregas took a free kick and William Gallas headed it home for the first goal for Arsenal. The first 45 minutes were really a back and forth and really didn't look to be an advantage to either team. It has been hard for an EPL teams coming in to Celtic Park to walk away with a victory. The last team to do it was Brian Clough's Nottingham Forrest some 20 plus years ago.

Playing witht he same side that just destroyed Everton, you would have thought Arsenal would have still been on the high and ready to pounce. With being up 1-0 at the half, it took until the 70th minute for us to get a second and that was an Own Goal to take the lead 2-0. Still even at 2-0 this Arsenal team didn't look as strong as this weekend. Vermaelan once again has a pretty good match as well as Cesc.

Why we continue to let Bendtner play is beyond me. I know he had some goals last year, but he is so inconsistant and really hasn't shown that he's worth the start. How about sticking young Jack Wilshire in there and giving him a chance next week. He's young and inexperienced, but how else will he get what he needs.

So I'll take the win and 2 away goals back next week to Ashburton Grove. I feel that Arsenal should be strong enough to hold off and get to the group stage, but they better not sit back and take Celtic lightly. I would pounce from the start and stick it to them for the whole match.

Arsenal 6 - 1 Everton Welcome Back To The EPL

For the first 20 minutes of the match I was thinking Oh no what are we doing? But then Denilson blasts one in the goal from about 20 yards out and it all gets started. From there we scored two goals from set pieces. Thomas Vermaelan put in a header in the 36th minute and then William Gallas puts another one away in the 40th minute. So after a 20 minutes of an average start we finally saw the light and turned it on. We looked pretty darn good for the rest of the first half. Now granted we were playing a team that was missing a few players, but still it's the EPL and anything can happen.

The second half started off with Cesc scoring a beautiful goal on a pass from RvP. Cesc scored again in the 57th minute on a counter attck receiving the ball near half and taking it all the way down for a goal. Eduardo put another one in late and unfortunately we couldn't keep the clean sheet but Saha put one in the back of the net.

Still all in all it was a good match by most everyone. I don't think Bendtner really did much, but he's always hot and cold. Arshavin didn't score, but he hustled hard and kept Everton on their heals. Cesc was brilliant as was Vermaelan. Denilson has his flashes of good, but not as much as we need.

Great start to the season, hope we keep it up all the way through. Now on to Celtic for the Champions League Qualifier Tuesday. Let's get it done!

USMNT Can't Handle the Pressure Once Again

The US once again played a weak second half and lost yet another big match. This to me was a big match because of the bragging rights and of course it's Mexico. Back in the days of living in Southern California I would have all the windows open on match day and I remember if Mexico scored you would hear fireworks and shotguns going off in the area. No so much the same in Overland Park, KS. I have been the only one in the neighborhood watching the match since it was on some unknown station called MUN2. I know that the rights to the Mexican matches are owned by Telemundo, but come one! Put the match on ESPN, FSC or one of the big 3. That was just silly putting it on a station I will never watch again. Even if they played every Mexican League match on the station, it wouldn't matter, because I hate the style they play and you spend half the match watching guys dive and hold their legs as if they were broken for five minutes then get up to a full sprint. Not my idea of a good match.

Now let's get to the match. The first mistake I think that was made was in the coaching by Bradley. He had two solid players in Altidore and Spector and they both sat on the bench to start. Seriously, what are you thinking. I'm really not sure personally, but that's why I still question Bradley's ability to run this program. Steve Cherundolo and Brian Ching may have experience plating, but they certainly didn't impress me this match and they should both have started on the bench.

Word came out that Landon Donovan has a touch of swine flu. Do you think he is using that as his excuse to why he played so poorly outside of one good pass to Davies. Donovan and Clint Dempsey both were rather dissappointing in this match. Dempsey was playing too far back and didn't help the offense at all.

When we did sub, we brought in Benny Feilhaber and Stuart Holden. I've always felt that if you are in a draw situation you need to beef up your offense in order to make a run at it. Instead, we play defensively and allow a second goal to get scored because we have no offensive push.

Top player of the match was Onyewu and Howard. That could easily been a 5-0 blowout if those guys didn't keep us in it with their strong play. Still having a strong defense isn't going to get you anything unless you have something on the other end to mount an attack.

Bob Bradley is the key to why the US lost to Mexico. I think there needs to be some serious consideration to the current coaching staff and maybe it's time for a change. We are less than a year from SA2010 and we are a shit team at the moment. There's no chance that what we came to the table with the other day has any chance of pulling off moving out of the first group stage. Where is our young talent and why are we not getting them out there now.

Patrick Vieira - A Return or Not

Patrick Vieira is getting on the later side of his playing days, but really wants to make a push to be a part of the 2010 World Cup squad for France. His days seem to be numbered un Jose Mourinho at Internazionale having only made 10 appearences under Mourinho's management. So what to do. Does he stick it out and fight for that spot and hope to make the French team? Could he come to Arsenal and help solve some of our central defensive holes?

Personally I would love to see him come and finish his final days as a player in an Arsenal kit. I think that both Vieira and Cesc would make a good combination in the center and help feed balls up but also pad us from to much pressure on our defense. Yes he's older and slower, but he still wants to make that French team and will play hard to prove he's worth it.

I don't think it's worth spending any money, but if they release him, I say bring him on. We lost a few key people and he would fill in well for us. So come on Arsene, give him a shot to show he still has it in him.

Arsenal Draw Celtic in the CL Qualifier

Arsenal will play Celtic in the qualifying round of the Champions league. The first leg will start August 18/19 at Parkhead. So not an easy match to start, but I think we have the power to take them down! Come On Arsenal!

Getting Ready - The Countdown To 2009-10 Is On

So the summer has been full of bigs moves in the league. Adebayor and Toure off to Man Shitty along with a host of other big names going to join Robinho to now have a five way race for the top four spots in the EPL. This frightens me as Arsenal have sold and in return have bought one who we haven't seen much from, yet. Machester United wasted a spot on Michael Owen, just wait he will be hurt by the fourth match. Real Madrid have exploded and took that little twat Christiano Ronaldo out of the EPL forunately. Real picked up KaKa and a bunch of others as well, wanting to beat on Barca this year. Good thing for Gol TV we will see many of these matches in the US.

So the EPL starts in just over a week, the pre-qualifying rounds of the Champions League have already started and a lot of pre-season friendlies are on their way. Arsenal took back the Emirites Cup after losing it to Hamburg last year. The gunners looked good in those first two matches. As long as the boys can stay fit, we will have a good run this year.

Eduardo played some and Rosicky as well. Arshavin was on fire in the match against Athletico Madrid. Cesc played great as always. I'm still really concerned about the anchor of our defense. I really hope we pick up one more player who can contribute to helping us be solid in the back.

Last season we didn't post much out here, but once again I will pleadge to post once a week and maybe an Arsenal match report if I can. Get ready, the season is closing in and we will be in the thick of it sooner that you think.