2013 – 2014 Season – Arsenal Performance Index

Post by Resident Blogger : SimonSEEZ

Transfer business done and dusted, football can return to sanity now or can we? The daily mirror has linked us with Barcelona right back Montoya and a couple of players from Germany. Montoya is running into the last year of his contract at Barcelona, ON A FREE?? and we all know who likes free more than any other don’t we? That’s me again..drifting to transfer talk.

At work I’ve got these monthly sessions where my targets per month are analysed vis a vis the quality of my work, at the end of the year it’s all summed up and divided by 12 to give me my rating for the year which determines if I get promoted, pay rise or errrr  errr  fired? Naaa, we wouldn’t want that now do we? I wonder if Wenger gets these sessions too. With the amount of power he wields what would the mood at the sessions anyway. In any case, I’ve got some Key Performance Index (KPI) for him this season, even made more important as he runs into the last year of his contract.

The league, our bread and butter, there is a reason I start off with it and it has nothing to do with Charity beginning at home. It’s a tough competition and it has only got tougher since the money bags invaded it. Man Utd have all the experience at winning it, Chelsea and Man City can afford to buy it, Spurs, yuck spurs…with their over a hundred million pounds spent this season they look like a poor mans Man City and Liverpool seem to have started off well. Have we used the window well to make our team better? All sins are forgiven once I remember Ozil. Given a choice between the league title and the Champions league, I’ll take the league right now. Can we win the league, it’s a tough call, is it impossible? Definitely not.

Our team looks solid, I tweeted a few hours ago about how our midfield was the best in the league with only Chelseas close to the talent we currently have. I feel our midfield can win us the league if everyone stays fit. We have a pool of talent there and Wenger would have a headache picking a starting midfield. The league is long and hard and he would have to make the best use of the squad to keep us in competition till the very end. This season especially no one is guaranteed dominance, Spurs and Liverpool have strengthened well, Everton with their new acquisitions are not pushovers. This can only mean that a lot of points will be dropped at grounds like these, everyone has dropped points this season already except Liverpool. We have to make the Emirates a fortress; we have lost our fear factor. Remember when we would go to grounds with Bergkamp, Henry, Pires and Ljunberg and teams would set up just to defend out of fear? This team can bring that back. We might not scare teams in Europe but when we go to grounds like Palace, Cardiff, Norwich, Fulham, Southampton etc our fear factor should go before us and this can only be built by constant victories, dominant possession football and quick counter attacks like we did at the Spurs game.  Minimum acceptable position this year should be 2^nd.

Tough group we got in the Champions league, can we get out of the group? I think so. Its important we win all our home games and have one outstanding victory in one away ground. Ten points should be fine for any team in this group to qualify. A detailed Champions league group stage analysis would be up on the blog next week by our resident blogger @theOHbee so watch this space for that. This is a competition we haven’t fared well in since our semi final loss to Utd in 08-09 season. The manager has huge experience in Europe and our seemingly new counter attacking football would suit Europe very well. We have signed a player in Mesut Ozil who has tremendous experience playing in this competition and hopefully will be able to pass this experience across the team. Minimum acceptable position should be a semi-final exit.

The FA cup, I think this competition is the reason the British Media hates us. Wenger has been accused of consistently undervaluing this competition with the teams he fields. He got loads of grief last season also after the loss to Blackburn for the same reason, but the players that were fielded to play against Blackburn that Saturday were good enough to beat them and should have.  I believe the problem with this competition is the manager, if Wenger keeps giving the players the aura that he doesn’t rate this competition, it’s the same aura they would take into the pitch when they play. Tell them you rate it, select a team that can win it and we would win it. This is the last trophy we won and I know we are all sick of hearing the jibes about how long we have gone barren but when you remember that the kick that won this cup for us was from Vieras boots you would have an idea of how far behind it is. To win this competition I feel you usually need a maximum of three big performances depending on how the draw works for you. Wigans run to Wembley last season is enough prove of how a lucky draw can get you to the finals. There is no minimum acceptable here, it has to be a clear mandate to win this.

Carling my Darling, oh! Now it’s the boring name The Capital One cup. This competition has over the years been a chance to give the youngstars a feeling of what a real match day is like. Best position recently was runner up in 2010-2011 season when we lost to Birmingham. Ranks extremely high in my worst football days ever which has days like when Chelsha won the champions league. That tops my list! Our loss to Bradford last year has very few adjectives to describe it , that was an extreme low! Players like Serge Gnabry, Zelalem, Niklas Bendtner and Yaya Sanogo know they have their chance to shine here and they better take it. A sprinkling of first team players especially in defence is needed and should we ever get into trouble the big guns have to be unleashed. Minimum acceptable here, WIN !!!

Round Up

Our trophy drought has made almost every competition we partake in a near must win. However we have to be reasonable and realize we can’t achieve all.  You want to know what a trophy would do for Arsenal? Did you see the social media buzz on the signing of just Ozil? Then imagine what would happen if we win something like the league. Cam On The ARSENAL!!!!!

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