Dial Square Story – Part 2
The continuation of my Arsenal career storyline. You can find the previous part here.
October 2010
Premier League
Newcastle 1-1 Arsenal
We kicked off October with an away game against newly promoted Newcastle. They didn’t get any good signings during the summer, so I was fairly confident to beat them. With no FA Cup games scheduled yet, I decided to do some rotation, giving Djorou, Fabianski, Emmanuel-Thomas, Barazite and Rosicky some grass.
The match itself was stale at first, and at the start of the second half Newcastle scored a goal from a Fabianski mistake. Sound familiar? Newcastle got too excited though, and brought down Chamakh in the penalty area. Cesc scored, but the game died down again, with Newcastle playing a destructive and aggressive style. 1-1 in the end.
Premier League News
Man Utd were having a very poor start to their season and was currently 13th after 7 games played. Chelsea were very strong, grabbing 22 points out of 24 possible. Stoke had a good start, with Ricardo Fuller scoring 5 goals in 8 starts, leaving Stoke in 3rd place. West Ham was dead last, with only 2 points from 8 games.
Everton 1-3 Arsenal
Another interlull meant the next fixture after Newcastle would be almost two weeks later, against Everton. Cesc was up for the game, passing a cutting through ball to Wilshere, who scored in the 37th minute. Wilshere assisted Van Persie for the 2-0 goal 5 minutes later, and Wilshere’s good form was continuing. Chamakh came on in the 60th minute, and immediatly scored from a superb Walcott assist. 3-1 in the end, and yet another 3 goals scored in a game.
Arsenal 1-0 Birmingham
10th game of the season and Birmingham was visiting the Emirates. A dull match, but Walcott scored in the 64th minute to make the final score 1-0.
Arsenal 1-0 Wolves
Next up was Wolves at the Emirates, and this was a typical Wenger day. We absolutely dominated the first half with a 70% possession, but of course it was all sideways passing, no end result. 8 shots on goal, 3 on target. Noone was the weak link according to the overall ratings, it was just a bad day. Wolves had the tactic of disrupting Cesc, and even though they did a very good job, he scored the only goal of the game. 1-0.
Champions League
Arsenal 3-1 Celtic
Celtic was next in Europe, and Vermaelen had a good game scoring twice. Celtic didn’t have much to say, 3-1 in the end.
League Cup
Ipswich 2-2p Arsenal
Time for another Mickey Mouse cup fixture, so I let some of the youth prospects play again, this time against Ipswich. After a shaky start, we got more stable in midfield, but we weren’t really getting anywhere in a very boring game.
Szczesny
Hoyte – Nordtveit – Bartley – Traore
Barazite – Coquelin – Randall
Wilshere – Watt – Vela
In the second half we created more chances, and eventually Wilshere did his best Messi impression by wiggling through 3 Ipswich defenders and scoring an awesome goal. A couple of minutes later Ipswich replied through a mistake from Bartley, who had been faultless so far.
Wilshere and Barazite were constantly harassing the Ipswich backline, but as Watt was having a poor game I decided to bring on Chamakh in the 80th minute or so. This made things easier, and Chamakh made it 2-1 in extra time. However, Ipswich replied instantly yet again, taking the match to penalties.
Szczesny saved the day though, and we got through to the quarterfinals against Aston Villa on a 5-4 penalty shootout.
Scouting
I started to take a look at the squad and the positions I needed to fill based on the first two months of the season. Subotic, Adler and Chamakh were doing a great job so far, and the fans confidence was almost at maximum with all the new recruits.
The sale of Arshavin meant that I didn’t really have a natural player in the left wing position. I could push that position up and play Chamakh next to Van Persie, but I didn’t want to lose the left flank defensively. I had Nasri as first choice in that position, and Wilshere was having a good season so far, so I didn’t worry about the left wing yet.
The one weak link is the defensive midfield position. Song is great in it, but if he gets injured (or goes to the African Cup) the only backup is Jay Emmanuel-Thomas. After JET’s two first appearances he was at a 7.60 overall rating, but something about him was making me nervous.
So right now, the plan is to look at another defensive midfielder, even though I also have Craig Eastmond and Francis Coquelin. I’m also thinking about maybe retraining Johan Djorou and Håvard Nordtveit into defensive midfielders.
Steven N’Zonzi was having a good season with Blackburn though, so I’ll wait until December to make a decision based on the performances of both my own players and a couple of players I’m looking at.
November 2010
Premier League
So at the start of November we were top of the league, with 8 clean sheets and 22 goals scored in 11 games. Man Utd had started to get some momentum as well, and were 6th with a game in hand.
Middlesbrough 0-2 Arsenal
Middlesbrough away was next on the itinerary. Rosicky and Wilshere on the flanks, and Rosicky got his first goal of the season after 11 minutes. 5 minutes later Song got injured, so now Jay Emmanuel-Thomas had about 80 minutes to prove he should be trusted in that position. It wasn’t looking great though, JET made a lot of minor mistakes and dumb tackles. Rosicky scored again in the second half, making it 2-0 in the end.
Luckily Song was only out for a couple of days, and JET’s performance in the last game was worrying me. Steven N’Zonzi won yet another young player of the month, so I was keeping a close eye on him.
Arsenal 4-1 Blackburn
13th game of the season and Blackburn came to visit the Emirates. Wilshere scored the first goal, Van Persie the second. Vela scored the third just before halftime. It looked like yet another 3-0 win. Blackburn clawed one back at the start of the second half, thanks to a mistake from Cesc. Van Persie made it 4-1, and that was also the final score.
With Van Persie out for 3-4 weeks, it was now time for Chamakh to claim his first team spot. And the first challenge was Manchester United at Old Trafford.
Manchester United 1-2 Arsenal
With Nasri, Walcott, Diaby and Van Persie out, I had to deploy Rosicky, Wilshere, Denilson and Chamakh in the battle of Old Trafford. Rosicky scored very early, and throughout the first half Man Utd were struggling to break us down. We dominated possession and went into halftime 1-0 up. Second half started with an amazing curled shot by Nani to make it 1-1. Fletcher and Rodwell were reducing Cesc’s influence from the middle, so I instructed the team to focus passing down the flanks. Man Utd were playing a very aggressive pressing game, but Rosicky found his way through to score his second goal. Final score 2-1, and we were still unbeaten in the league.
Arsenal 1-0 Chelsea
Next up was Chelsea at the Emirates. Van Persie and Nasri still injured, so Wilshere and Chamakh filled in. Game started nervous, and Chelsea had a couple of chances in the first 20 minutes. Adler got injured, so Fabianski had to come on, and I started to get very nervous. Song scored his first goal of the season, a lucky shot at the 30 minute mark. The score stayed 1-0 until the end in a very boring game.
Both Cesc and Adler were now out injured for at least two weeks, and they joined Diaby, Nasri and Van Persie on the injury list in the first choice 11. With Spurs coming up, followed by the important Fiorentina game it was starting to look bad.
Champions League
Celtic 3-1 Arsenal
November kicked off with a game against Celtic away. For the first time this season we played in our brand new yellow away shirts (the reason for this is a BUG in the Dial Square Database). Celtic were fired up, and we couldn’t cope at all with their aggressive tactics. Adler had his first mistake, and Van Persie was ineffectual and lonely at the top. Lesson learned though, and maybe a 4-1-4-1 is better against teams like this.
Standard 0-1 Arsenal
Next european fixture was a very important game against Standard. After the loss against Celtic we were second in the group, with Celtic on identical points. I wanted to win the match against Standard just in case Celtic won against Fiorentina. Subotic and Sagna had small knocks though, so my backline got reshaped slightly.
Right from the start I could tell that we were going to have a hard time breaking these Belgian assholes down. Their goalkeeper was having a great day. I could follow the Fiorentina game on my iPhone 4G, and Celtic were holding Fiorentina to a 1-1 draw. Desperation kicked in so I replaced Walcott on the right with Bendtner, who almost immediatly scored his debut goal of the season. Meanwhile, Fiorentina had scored 2-1, so I was beginning to relax a little. In the end we won 1-0, while Fiorentina won 3-1.
We were now 3 points above Celtic with one more game to play and a 6 goal difference. I have to assume Celtic will win against Standard, and I’ll even assume they’ll win big…so the goal is to play at least a draw against Fiorentina in the last game of the group.
Part 3 >