Last night was one of the worst performances from an Arsenal side that I can remember. For a team that prides itself on the back of attacking football, to have one shot on target in the 94th minute, its quite frankly appalling. We never looked like creating anything going forward and defensively we had a disaster. Santos had a complete mare at the back and wasn't helped by the fact he got no cover from Podolski or anyone else for that matter.
We started Gervinho ahead of Giroud which in my opinion is a disaster to start with. The Ivorian is erratic and quite frankly not us to our level. Wenger keeps saying he has faith in our new signing yet his reluctance to play them to me suggests something else. Giroud needs games to bed in and at the moment he's just not getting them and I can imagine that frustrates him a lot. The managerial tactics were poor too, we clearly weren't at the races yet we still waited until the 70th minute to make changes. All players will struggle to make an impact with 20 minutes to go and they came on and did very little. The last 2 games have been worrying and today made for a feisty, angry and uncomfortable AGM.
After reading what was essentially a transcript of it I have come to the conclusion I came to a few years ago. The board need to change and they need to change NOW! Peter Hill-Wood is past it and has no agenda apart from his own. Gazadis is pushing the same boat he has been for years, financially stable and all that but when asked about squad investment, dodged the question. If you believe what was said Arsene has the money to spend but chooses not too because of his beliefs. I find that a hard pill to swallow, when you look back to his early years, did we develop Viera, Pires, Ljungberg, Bergkamp? No. I think the board are using Wenger in a manner that he can't defend.
Signing multi-million pound deals is all well and good but only when the team compete and the stadium is full. Last night neither happened and I'm afraid if something doesn't change sooner rather than later, the deals will stop, the money will stop and the club will be in danger of entering an era we cannot escape from. So my feeling at the moment is: Wenger in, Hill-Wood out.
Back to the football and Saturday the team has a chance to redeem itself by returning to winning ways playing QPR at home and hopefully they will be bolstered by injury returns. Until then, have a good week.
