Arsenal vs Sunderland 0-0

The new Premier League season is here and I am back! I meant to write a post a few weeks ago and give a review of our summer transfers but never found time for it. I will just kill two birds with one stone now.

Let's get the big pink elephant out of the rom first: Robin Van Persie. This will be the last time i write about him because he is no longer playing for Arsenal and i am tired of listening to the moaning of everyone! I am not gong to lie, selling him to Man U was very painful for me to experience and no matter how many great moments he has given us, i will never forgive him for going there. To me, that move just takes him out of the discussion of being an Arsenal great/legend. Everyone is blaming Arsene for selling him but in reality when someone does not want to renew their contract and wants to leave, it's silly to think you can keep them and they will be 100% commited to the club in that last year of their contract. So, i think selling him for 24 million was great business considering he is 29 and has had only one injury free season. Now what everyone needs to do is stop talking about Van Persie and focus on the players we have. p.s. Man U gave him 250K weekly salary which to me is absurd. I agree with Wenger when he says that one day this salary bubble will bust.

On the flip side: all these roumours, which might be confirmed by the end of this week, that we will sell Alex Song to Barcelona are something that i really dislike. If Wenger let's this happen it will be a big mistake on his part! Even though he keeps repeating that we have so many midfielders, we all know that Song brought toughness and some unexpected touch that none of the current crop has. The only guys i might compare to being as tough as him are Frimpong and Wilshere and they are both still injured. Song has three years left on his contract and hasn't requested a move. For us to sell him now will be just stupid and Wenger won't have the excuse that "we were forced to sell".

The last paragraph before analyzing the match today is about the players who came in this summer. We saw a glimpse of them today and i think we bought some good players. Cazorla will be an absolute stud and we already saw that today: great touch on the ball with both legs, good vision about the game and good movement. I think it's just a matter of time before he becomes one of our most important players! Podolski and Giroud will need some time before we can really judge them. I think Podolski will be solid and Giroud is a bit of a question mark. He had a really bad miss today which could have won the game for us, let's hope that won't affect his confidence and he will turn in a good season. I would have loved it if we had bought one good defender as well. Right now we only have Jenkinson at right back, unless you consider slotting Yennaris or Coquelin there. Hopefully we will be able to sell the clowns Djourou, Bendtner, Arshavin and Squillaci and bring another good defender in.

Now to the game today. Obviously a dissapointing result, no question about that but a lot of positives as well. I think first and most importantly the defense was solid, especially in the second half. The first half we got caught a few times with through balls and Sunderland had some chances but in the second half we shut them down completely. Our pressing on the ball was very good throughout the whole game and that was refreshng to see. I realy believe that if we can be solid defensivelly, we will have a good season. Let's hope today was a step in that direction.

Offensivelly, we need to play better. Many times we would run out of ideas and just pass the ball around instead being decisive and trying to play one touch football. Sunderland were defending great thoughout the game, and i gve them credit but we could have been more creative up front. Gervinho had a solid game as far as his movement and good runs on both wings but at times his decision making still sucks. Too many times he tries to just dribble past defenders when after his initial burst there are open players he can pass the ball to. In a way, he reminds me of Theo when he starts running with the ball and doesn't make great decisions with it. Talking about Theo, he didn't have a good game, was lost for big parts of it. Same for Podolski, he wasn't on the same page with the rest of the team but i think with some more time they will get better. Cazorla was our best player, even though he missed some passes, he was the brains when we moved forward and created the best chance of the day which Giroud somehow managed to miss. Diaby did ok, but it was apparent that he needs more matches under his belt. Arteta was solid as usual and was doing a lot of the defensive duties that Song used to do.

Vermaelen and Mertesacker both had a decent game, even though as i mentioned earlier they got beat by through balls a few times in the first half. I was happy to see Mertesacker have a solid game, because we will need all of our defenders playing well for the long season ahead. Gibbs was good as well, recovered decisively the few times Sunderland had breaks on his flank. Jenkinson dissapointed me a bit. His crosses weren't very good and last year i bragged so much that he crosses better than Sagna. He had trouble controlling the ball a lot of times, and spent portions of the game way up on the wing without recovering fast enough to the defensive side of the pitch. Ramsey and Arshavin were very dissapointing and mostly because of their carelessness with the ball!! Both of them lost the ball in the middle of the pitch more than once and mainly because they were too casual with it. If you are a subtitute and the coach gives you the chance to come in and impact the game, you can't be lazy and careless with the ball.

So, tough start for us but some good signs from this team. If we start clicking offensivelly and we stay strong defensivelly we will have a good year regardless of what people think. We do need a good result next week in Stoke though, and we all know it's hard for us to play there, so let's hope it will be our first positive step of the season followed by many more! C'mon you Gunners!!!