Thursday, November 30, 2006

Another Defeat

Oh Dear. After not having lost to Fulham since the Battle of Hastings, it was a game you thought we could win to put us back on track. Sadly it wasn't to be. Seven changes were made to the starting eleven from the Bolton game.

Both the fullbacks, Eboue & Clichy, were dropped. Both players had been pretty poor the last couple of games, so in some ways it was a positive change - players who don't perform need to be reminded that they are not guaranteed a place in the team. Unfortunately, we don't have another recognised left back, so Wenger chose to play Flamini at left back. This in turn meant he needed to change the midfield - and for some reason Wenger decided that Fabregas should be dropped and replaced with Song. While I agree that we can't expect the 19 year old Fabregas to play game in, game out without feeling the effects, you would surely struggle to find anyone who would think Song is an adequate replacement.

Ever since he first appeared for Arsenal, there has been much debate over the quality (or lack of it) of Song. However, his performance last night has been universally criticised, with the Daily Mail describing it thus:

"Song's performance was as bad as it gets at this level. Rarely has an Arsenal player looked so out of his depth under Wenger's stewardship."

I can't see many more games for Song in the immediate future...

Where we go from here I don't know, but we can't put in a performance like this against Spurs on Saturday. However, I fear we now have too many players who don't appreciate the history of the fixture, and we seem to lack players who have a more physical nature to their game (which is bound to be needed in a local derby). I for one will be glad to see Lauren & Diaby fit again, as at least they are prepared to get physical when needed.


As an aside, after the Hamburg game, I put the poster of Flamini that was in the match programme up on my 2 year old Son's bedroom wall. On Saturday afternoon (before the Bolton game) he ripped it down and tore it into a hundred pieces. Maybe he had a glimpse of what was to come...

Monday, November 27, 2006

More January Transfers

After numerous reports linking Arsenal with two Spanish players today, Fans FC go one better and add another player into the mix.

"Three European stars are being lined up for a January move to the Emirates Stadium and they will cost a combined fee in excess of £33million." roars the headline. As well as Antonio Puerta and Jesus Navas of Sevilla, they then link us with Livorno keeper Marco Amelia, with the club president Aldo Spinelli trying to talk up the value of his player:

"
The player has also received an interesting offer from a Premiership club to join them in June, but I will not confirm if it's Liverpool. It may be an even more important outfit.

"I've heard the valuation of £7 million, but that is the wrong price.

"We are talking about a real champion without a shadow of a doubt. He is one of the best in the world and £7 million would not be enough to sign him."

So, just to recap, we have now we have been linked with:
Julian Esteban
Ahmed Apimah Barusso
Antonio Puerta
Jesus Navas
Marco Amelia

It seems some sites just publish articles such as these to get noticed on NewsNow, or some other aggregator - up go their hits and so they can command more advert fees. Sigh.

After the weekend, the more likely activity for Arsenal in January is the departure of Jeremie Aliadiere. With both Henry & Van Persie unavailable for the Bolton game, he still couldn't even make the bench. As soon as we went a goal behind I looked at the team/bench and wondered where the goals were going to come from. We looked short of options, with no out & out striker on the bench. Surely we didn't need two defenders on the bench? Hleb & Baptista both look occasional goalscorers at best.

Of course it's easy to be wise after the event, but we have to give ourselves some hope of scoring goals, and the options we had at our disposal on Saturday looked limited. If Aliadiere can't make the bench with two of our forwards out, he might as well go in January.

Friday, November 24, 2006

Why I won't buy DRM music

After I first got my Rio Karma a couple of years ago, I'd thought I'd buy some music downloads to supplement my CD collection that I had ripped. Big Mistake.

I bought 4 or 5 tracks. At the time, I was thinking of buying a Slim Devices Squeezebox (which I subsequently did), and was unsure of whether to get the more expensive wireless version. As a test of my wireless network, I set up my laptop over by the Hi-Fi and tried playing some of the music files from my main PC. Lo & Behold, when I tried to play one of the files I had 'bought' and downloaded, up pops the box informing me that the licence of the music file would be updated before it would be played (even though the file was still located on the main PC, the fact I was trying to play it from the laptop seemed to count as 1 instance of copying the file to another computer). I then sat and waited for at least 10 minutes, until I gave up watching the 'Updating Licence' message. One of the other files I downloaded had a licence restriction that prevented me copying it to the Rio.

That was the first and last time I bought any DRM 'protected' music files. My whole feeling towards DRM is that it is implemented solely for the benefit of hardware manufacturers - the fact that files bought from iTunes or Zune will only work on the iPod & Zune players respectively shows that the manufacturers main concern is that you are locked in to their product line. Wanna buy a new player? Too bad your music library won't play on it - but, hey, you can always go and buy it all over again from a competing store! Then we have the innocent sounding names for the DRM scheme - Fairplay (Apple) or PlaysForSure (Microsoft). What is fair about stopping you playing a legally bought file on a player made by someone else? It surely won't PlayForSure if you try and load a file from the MSN Music shop on an iPod!

So, what do I do? I buy the CD and rip it myself. It generally only costs £1 more, but I can rip it to high quality OGG or FLAC format, not the low quality 128Kbs you find on most music stores. And I can play the CD in the car. I would rather not have to buy the CD, as it just means more stuff cluttering up the house, but for me, there is no alternative.

For downloads I use Magnatune, who have a great selection of new music by unknown artists, all of a very high standard. All of their albums are DRM free and available as high quality downloads. I occasionally use eMusic, who are also DRM free, although I don't like their subscription based model.

The fact that these two stores exist and have not gone bankrupt shows the absurdity of the RIAA and their DRM lobby. If piracy were so bad, these stores simply wouldn't survive.

Someone needs to point out to the architects of these DRM schemes that Copyright law allows for fair use. The way DRM is currently implemented does not allow for any fair use as far as I'm concerned. What is the modern day equivalent of going round a mates house with a new CD? Put some downloaded files onto a memory stick, get round your mates house and oh, sorry, there is no internet connection there, so the licence can't be verified and you can't listen to the music. Too bad.

So, no DRM for me.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Huge sigh of relief at first Emirates visit


After successfully negotiating the online Arsenal ticket booking system (what exactly is the booking fee for? It is an automated system and they don't even issue a paper ticket!), I got to my first game at the Emirates - the must win Champions League game against Hamburg.



The new stadium is breathtaking when you get up close to it, and the views of the pitch are great - seeing the immaculate pitch bathed in light was a sight to behold. The seats are also great - a nice high back and right amount of padding. Also had a quick trip to the new Armoury store to get the promised treats for my Daughter, as her indoctrination into supporting Arsenal seems to be complete :-) I got her some pencils and a Thierry photo, but managed to resist the temptation to get an Arsenal Dog lead.

Onto the game. As Hamburg arrived having lost all their games in the group, I was hoping for a bit of a rout to get some confidence back in the team. Unfortunately, an early Hamburg goal put paid to that. Far too often in the first half we gave the ball away cheaply - Clichy, Flamini, Hleb & Eboue were the main culprits, although Cesc wasn't immune. One of our few good moves ended up with Hleb hitting the post, which prompted 'here we go again' thoughts.

We started the second half much better, with everyone looking much sharper and determined, which resulted in a Van Persie equaliser. Unfortunately we couldn't sustain it, and our performance started to fall back to the level we saw in the first half. It was only the introduction of Walcott (and subsequently moving him to the right) that brought us to life. All the way through the game I had been moaning to my mate that no one was prepared to run at the Hamburg defence. Instead we just kept passing it around the edge of the box, waiting for an opportunity to thread a perfect ball into the box (although more often than not nobody would be in there). Then Walcott came on and started running at the defence with great results. We immediately looked like we could get a goal, and then did. Eboue was a bit lucky that their keeper made a hash of it for his goal, but Baptista's goal was purely down to some class play from Walcott.

For most of the game, it looked like I would be going home frustrated, but the late goals and introduction of Walcott changed all that.

I mentioned earlier how easily we gave the ball away at times. It was incredibly frustrating, as Hleb for example, often shows sublime skill - the knack he has of leaving opponents for dead with a deft turn is incredible. But equally at times he looked as if he could lose the ball even if he was the only guy on the pitch. I don't think I have seen Clichy play as badly as he did last night - at times you wondered if he had his boots on the wrong feet! He hasn't played many games in the last year, so hopefully it is just a case of him still being a bit rusty. Henry seemed more interested in having verbal battles with the Hamburg defenders than anything else, which eventually cost him a cheap booking as he 'collided' with one of them off the ball after more verbals. All in all it was a mixed performance, but hopefully the team can gain some confidence from the way they turned it around. It will be interesting to see if Wenger responds to the inevitable clamor to give Walcott more starts.

Finally a word on the crowd. I have read quite a bit lately on the early leavers. What amazed me was people were still coming in when the clock showed 32 minutes left of the first half - they had missed virtually a third of the half! Then they start getting up again 6 or 7 minutes before the end of the half - is a Hot Dog really that exciting? Then again at the end, people were streaming out in droves before Baptista got his goal. I noticed in the programme a statistic that said if you had left 10 minutes early for every Champions League game this season, you would have missed 22 goals - hopefully they were all cheesed off when they heard Baptista's goal go in.

Admittedly it was slow going when leaving the stadium after the game, but it is still relatively early when the game finishes (around 9:35), which leaves plenty of time to get back home (even to the backwater where I live). I think next time I might just stick a foot out when some of these clowns are trying to get past ;->

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Ryan Garry back in the squad

For the Carling Cup game away to Everton, it is nice to see Ryan Garry back in the squad.

As many will no doubt be aware, Garry has spent the best part of three years on the sidelines due to terrible shin injuries. At the time he made his debut for Arsenal (at the start of our unbeaten 49 game run) he was a very highly rated youngster. Now he is a lot older, and has seen younger players come in and develop. It must have been a frustrating time to say the least.

I have always been impressed with his attitude while he was out. He gave a couple of interviews to Arsenal TV online, and in those it was clear to see how much being at Arsenal meant to him, and he wasn't going to let the chance of playing for Arsenal slip him by. You got the impression that he would play on one leg if that's what it took!

He deserves a lot of credit, and it is a shame that other young English players who have come and gone couldn't show the same attitude.

Lets hope he gets a run out tonight to make all his hard work worthwhile.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Handbags alert!

If one thing comes out of the over-hyping of the handbags incident at West Ham, I hope it's that it brings back the 'us against the world' mentality that we used to have. Incidents like that in the past (pick a random Old Trafford melee for example) have engendered a great spirit in the side that is next to impossible to get any other way.

There is no doubting that we are missing that little extra something at the moment, and that could be the missing ingredient. Plus I think we miss someone like Baptista or Diaby in games where we are struggling to get going - a physical steamroller to get going on a run or two would soon get everyone in the team going a bit more.