Sheikhen, not stirred : A Man City preview

Today's match is a big game, like an oversized boar. As the King in the North (London) goes warring beyond the wall, he faces many a hold and many a battle conspiring to plot his fall. Allow me to ignore the rigour of painstaking research and dish out some facile analysis of what could decide the battle today at the Etihad stadium:

1. Koscielny vs Aguero: Aguero vs Kos would be an interesting battle to watch for they are evenly matched, with each of Aguero's strengths finding a counterpart in Koscielny's defensive capabilities. I am confident that Aguero's movement, pace and agility will find a just and able opposing force in Koscielny's astute positioning, game-reading and quick interceptive powers.The pint sized Aguero doesn't pose much of a threat in the air and the air has never been Kos's dominant area anyway , so that's one less thing to worry about. In Man City vs Chelsea it was Aguero who dropped deeper to collect the ball, turn and dribble away from two defenders on the left flank to cut in and pass the ball to why-always-me Balotelli. Then it was Cole and Terry's lax positioning that was at fault, with Terry in no man's land  after being drawn out so far outside his area. I feel Kos would do a better job of tracking the ever mobile Aguero and be at home even when dragged slightly deeper into midfield. Whether Per Mertesacker provides good cover whilst his defensive partner tracks Aguero, keeping Balotelli at bay and preventing the final balls from the Man City midfield remains to be seen. I am inclined to think Kos wiill win this battle.

2. Ramsey vs Yaya: On the departure of Cesc it was Ramsey who took up the mantle as it were to be the chief creative guy in our midfield. While he lacks Arteta's defensive solidity and Cesc's vision, he is what we have and he seems to be enough. He is comfortable on the ball and adept at finding his team mates in tight angles when pressed quickly, but is prone to look for the hollywood pass thereby cheaply conceding possession. He faces a experienced player in Yaya, a lumbering donkey with some Barca blood still in him, aided by Gareth Barry, quintessential no nonsense English midfielder. Once again, the creative duties will need to be spread out and Songinho might be required to save the day. I feel Ramsey might not quite match up to the task today, but with good performances from Arteta and Song, the battle in midfield can be won.

3. Walcott vs. Zabaletta: Clichy did us a disservice by getting himself banned for this game. His absolute defensive wasteness and moments of brainfreeze are worth a goal or two. Clichy's unavailability would mean that Mancini would probably play Zabaletta in his stead. This season whenever Arsenal have struggled to find any penetration through the centre with all their cute passing resulting in no end product it has been Walcott's 100m dashes that have proved to the difference. He had a spectacular game against Chelsea, ripping a certain Ashley Cole apart. If we get stuck in midfield I feel the game might shift to the flanks with us trying to expolot the pace of Walcott and tricks of Gervinho. Gervinho vs Richards I expect boy-giant Richards to dominate the wiry ivory coaster, with Gervinho winning us a few corners perhaps (which we duly waste by hitting it straight to their their first man). It has to be Walcott vs Zabaletta which looks to me like the more winnable battle. Ramsey's keen eye for the floating ball over defence onto the path of beep beep roadrunning walcott should pay us a few dividends. Ramsey to Walcott to assist RVP to put it in. Going all Narzidamus there, but I am more Tazijinx so probably expect Ramsey to score an own goal while RVP and Walcott collide on pitch suffering multiple concussions.

Hope the big game doesn't turn out to be a massive bore though. 

Why Chickens and Eggs crossed the EPL

The Chelsea-Valencia game was fascinating on many levels, a team as English as they come, against a team as Spanish as they come, and a result as expected as they come especially since I'd already used "as they come" phrasing twice and am as slavish to the dictates of symmetry in composition as they come. More fascinating to see this as-comely Spanish team resort to a disproportional number of speculative lobs into the box from Tino and Feghouli (who made it all too easy to reference the Ghoul part of his name, by only ever showing up when the ball was dead) in response to the English blockade (no I don't mean they stopped import export relations, fiscal aid, and pegging the exchan....not that I would know) perfected over so many years of getting mauled by the Luftwaffe (inappropriate Nazi salute FTW). Fascinating (as opposed to wide eyed horrorating) because it suddenly threw up the possibility that I've been doggedly haranguing the crossing play of the English as the single plasmodium responsible for the rampant malaria plaguing world football today, unjustly, given it might just be the natural response to the initial stimulus of big burly Stokish defenders and MFs populating the box and refusing to budge.

Obviously there is a gulf in quality between the Banega-Canales partnership and the Tino-Ghoul that eventually played, enough to claim the former would have unlocked the phalanx without resorting to aerial combat, but Tino is no slouch and to see even him have to thump a few upstairs invited a thought about the evolution of crossing play in England. Whether it is how 4-3-3's evolved against fullbacks, or how 3-4-3's evolved around the classic Drogba heading it on to partner kind of nonsense forward strategy, we've been lucky enough to see indelible changes in Football strategy clearly evolve over the last 7-8 years (or as I'd maintain "devolve", I still cant believe they just extincted MF diamonds and trequartistas so coldly!!!). But unfortunately, like the big amorphous slime bug from "Evolution" proved the ultimate species of survival depends solely on simplicity of purpose and function, it might just be probable that the English Crossing Chicken and Egg with English defensive manoeuvres become irrelevant with eventual reality of twin efficacy of said duo. Especially since not every team can have a Banega to overcome padlocks without hammers rather than dainty hairpins and hence would rather buy a hammer everyone can use. Usefulness aside (on this blog?? what am i saying!!!), I'm quite curious to see the origins of crossing play, they don't seem to have played this way 20-30 years back, my bet is on the year the goals/game ratio suddenly dwindled to its nadir betraying a shift to some serious Spartan defending.

Shall I draw you a fixture?

Of all the clubs in all the draws of the CL pot, AC Milan walks into ours. If there was a team that I had wanted to avoid drawing it would have been them, but as soon I thought that I knew we would get them so there was no point in me wanting to avoid them in the first place which means I wouldn't have thought that I had wanted to avoid them, hence not getting them. But I thought. And we did. (Or as they say in Latin, Cogito ergo did.) We will just have to deal with it now.

Yes, we do have an excellent history against Italian teams but I guess so would Manu against unknown teams from Switzerland. History counts for nought in football, although in the run of form that Arsenal is in now one can feel courageous enough to feel a bit confident about our chances. That run of form will heavily depend on what we do in the December festive fixture season mentalness with close to 63 games in 2 weeks or something insane like that. If we can continue this good run into February, then maybe, just maybe we can nick it and then go ahead and lose to Barcelona in the next round. We could have done with an easier tie but more on that in February when we have lost half our squad to injuries and the other half to the Bubonic plague (just to balance out the heavy jinxing I have done previously - commending our good form...what was I thinking!)

The Champions League's bastard brother Europa Snow (Mandatory song of ice...) conducted its draw today as well. We might not get the opportunity to test Andy Gray's now famous assertion that Barcelona would struggle against Stoke on a cold Wednesday night at the Brittania but we have something close enough. Stoke have drawn Valencia.

One of the few good things about being in London is that I get to watch La Liga now without having to be awake at ungodly hours and watching broken streams that make football look like bitmaps in motion rather the much touted poetry. Not that I have ever done this, but I would have to do in case I had wanted to watch these oh-we-play-such-beautiful-passing-football buggers play. But sitting in UK I can watch them at more convenient times. This has allowed me to confirm things I had known earlier (La Liga defenders cannot defend, Valencia crossapalooza too) and learn things I hadn't hitherto known (Valencia do play well, Barcelona are better than Arsenal). Watching one game of Valencia, albeit a game in which their one and a half team played (not the first team, but not quite their second team I gathered), has convinced me that there is some credence to the constant drum beating from this blog's la liga man. One word: steroids. They play like Arsenal on steroids. Get the Ramseys, Wilsheres and Songs of this world, pump steroids into their bloodstream and send them out onto the field to run like febrile hares in heat - lo, you have something that looks like Valencia. In the continuum (a staggering concept that I came up with about the trade-off between possession and penetration - requires a post of its own) between Barca and Arsenal, Valencia lie in between. They like having the ball (and eat it too) but not as much as Barca that they would pass it all the way back to the goalkeeper, stewards, the crowd and start all over again. But they aren't like Arsenal either and don't want to go forward with direct pace and are patient enough to pass and move without attempting too many of the risky (risky in the sense of conceding possession) attacking passes that Arsenal try. But one thing that stands out is the movement which is 10 times more than that of Arsenal. Arsenal for me have the most mobile midfield/strikers (next to Man City's maybe what with Silva Yaya and Aguero pirouetting all over the pitch) in EPL, but it was nothing compared to what I saw of Valencia. Their game seems faster, pacier, hurrieder, pressingier. The urgency with which they play is as if they are missing their favourite show on TV and want to be done with this stupid football business asap and get back to their homes. 

It will indeed be curious to see what happens when they face Stoke. That's Stoke with a style of playing that is football's answer to the all blacks and defenders who think the back to belly supleix is an allowed form of tackle in football. Stats I just made up show that Stoke's ball has spent more time in the air than the International Space Station. Passing is only something they have heard in passing, and it means nothing to them unless used in conjunction with the passing away of the opponent team's striker. Their rough-house, no holds barred, wrestlemaniasque, royal rumbly hell in a cell style versus Valencia's float like a butterfly sting like a bee on steroids approach should make for interesting viewing. Bring on the cold nights.

All this is probably nonsense given that I have watched only 1.5 games of Valencia, but hey it's my post ya.

Endangered Dave Villa

An innate problem in the Cosmic inter-dimensional web of destiny mechanism theory is its innocence and thereby vulnerability to abuse by malicious intent for evil causes. Case in point : Wretched fortune of erstwhile Dangerous Dave Villa... After eliciting a chorus of Hallelujah's as the magical missing piece in the Barca puzzle after Ibra's unceremonious fvckoffing, and regaling viewers with a season of visual perfection and clockwork grana (as close to orange as I can get with Barcelonic pun...), a stunning world cup, and even a really cute new hairstyle (which I'll forgive despite blatant copying from me...except for the part that his looks nice...and cost 500$, exactly 499.5$ more than mine, at current dollar rates of course...I'm not that cheap)- suddenly some malevolent force has just about pricked every possible pin into his voodoo doll. His regular absence in the team this season has been my constantly bleated opinion of what's wrong with Barca and why they will probably end up losing the league, the fact that it's because of a lopsided formation designed to absorb Cesc is just more salt and Ajinomoto on oozing pus and gangrene. Just when I thought he was being saved up to come and rescue Barca when they really needed it, he gets sent to Japan and breaks his leg.

Barca deserve it, they've really tempted fate by flirting with this doomed Cesc force fittation for too long, but Spain don't deserve it. Euro up next year, and that most definitely means a race Villa can't possibly win what with the T.B.A on his Tibia diagnosis. Torres must be smiling away, with his equally disastrous bunch of years (could it just be... ever since he left Atletico hmmmmm???? Asshole.), and stat-whores will immediately start asking why top scoring Spaniard Soldado isn't in the squad, which no amount of Valencia-fanaticism will make me endorse. He's a good player, but not Furia Roja first XI by any stretch. Although given Valencia gameplay, he would be so much more at home starting for Spain than Torres, Llorente or Negredo. Although I do wonder if Villa's absence gives an opening for an extra Midfielder instead, with attacking MFs like Silva, Mata, and Cazorla desperately trying to crack into the XI. Since I'd play Silva anyway, regardless of this contingency, my bet is on Pedro - his goal threat of the last two seasons has been spit on this year by Pep and his consistent overlooking, but he is pretty much Villa's direct replacement in the new avatar Villa played for Barca as left wing rather than Center FW. Not just because it sounds cool and is in vogue, but for genuine lack of options I'd like to see Pedro right, Mata left, Silva false 9 in front of Xavi-Iniesta on a Busquets anchor. Peace.

Frontline : Journalism at its hardest hittingest

Now before there is a chorus of tut-tuting and assorted sophisticated venting of implied disapproval (i.e calling me a real asshole) at any perceived distastefulness, let me first say in my defence...... that i don't care (said non-careness helped by fact that there's only so much "chorus" that our one reader can muster even on his more blustery days which are as few and far between as grand Somalian brunches....)

How friggin biggg is Ramires' head?? If I didn't know better from my very productive (not literally) years of studying biology, I'd have bet Ramires' head's mom dropped it on Ramires when it was a child. He's just 24, this is no age to be playing football! He should be waving AK-47s maniacally and cleansing Hutu cockroaches...and ruthless white devil Chelsea taking him away from all that and making him sweat it out in front of bloodthirsty fans and femur-thirsty defenders. So typical. Instead of a healthy dose of worrying about his next meal, or the lives and honor of his family and village, he's thrust out there in these life threatening situations and having to score goals against Valencia... (yes genius there was obviously a personal vendetta behind this , apart from the fact of course that I hated him right from his debut during the WC Qualifiers and Confederations Cup. The last thing Valencia needed, with its Banega-less impotent midfield, brickwalled Chelsea opposition, and coked up Victor Ruiz, was a humiliating goal by Ramires and that alien ass head of his.)

It baffles me why this guy is so successful, after first snickering away gleefully that Brazil had thrown away the likes of Edu, Juninho, Kaka and effectively replaced them with this quite apparently talentless but tireless (duh..what with all that running from vultures he must've done as a child) Midfielder, I eventually had to sink into the depressing fact that his lack of talent not only fit in majestically with the cesspit of overrated talentlessness that is Brazil, but also converted quite a few people against the relevance or efficacy of specimens like Juninho or Edu in today's Midfield. Of course, by this time, the criminal under rating or ill treatment of Juninho was no longer shocking (and coming from a Brazil hater, this is just....geez) given that no European club ever went and poached him away from Lyon, but the principle replacement of the tidy passing midfielder with 4-lunged maniacs who burst into the box now and then to score is becoming too alarmingly prevalent. Again, I blame Mourinho for this... things were fine before that jackass Deco came along and screwed life up for the Xavi's and David Pizarro's of the world.

WTGD S01E03: Van beats bus

Watching the El Classico taught me two things: one, that the Arsenal curse is still going strong, ruining the careers of players who dare to leave the club without the consent of Ser Wenger, much like the fate of brothers of the black who dare to leave the night's watch after taking the oath (Mandatory song of ice and fire reference). Two, that I can write this edition of Why this goalaveri di with a conscience clearer than last time, for RVP's volley remains the goal of the week (unlike Song's dribble and cross effort which appeared quite unimpressive after I saw Messi's throughball through the pupil of the retina of the eye of the tiniest needle in the haystack that was made while the sun was shining) despite the four goals in el classico; a game where Valdez's fail, Sanchez's cannot get boringer goal, Xavi's Lampardesque deflection and the accursed Fabregas's header (yes, airborne porcine is a possibility now) provided the goals.

Watching Arsenal-Everton at the stadium taught me two things as well. I seem to be learning things about the world two at a time. One, when teams come and park their fleet of newly purchased buses, lorries, trailers and assorted long vehicles Arsenal suffer. All their passing comes to nought, the midfield without a certain Cesc Fabregas quickly becomes bereft of ideas especially so when Walcott's pace is nullified by a equally pacy/experienced fullback and they struggle to find any penetration. Only two things (that number again) can rescue the team at this stage. One point one, some luck, a fluke, a favour from lady luck (not that kind of favour). Or one point two, a get me out of jail free card. Two, that card is Robin Van Persie. <end of serial number tree>

Barcelona had Messi last night to do that for them. We had RVP. Everton forgot to leave the coach they took from Merseyside to London outside the Emirates and brought it onto the field parallel parking it in front of the goal. Arsenal's early forays came from the pace of Walcott who once or twice caught Baines a bit slow footed and delivered good final balls into the danger area. But poor finishing meant Arsenal were 0-0 at halftime despite many decent chances. This gave Everton a chance to consolidate and park their buses even  harder and they brought on a coach sized centreback to replace their striker. Arsenal huffed and puffed but there was no end product. And that's when RVP decided to make it to this edition of WTGD.

Clickage.

The goal was simple and just class. Song collected the ball, looked up, saw RVP's run and lobbed the ball over Everton's defence onto the magic left foot of RVP who slotted it past Tim Howard effortlessly. Watching the replays you realise how incredibly wonderful the volley was! It was just brilliant. RVP's shot so perfectly meeting the ball in mid-air, sweetly propelling it onto a physics defying trajectory curving away from the goalkeeper till the very last before nestling in the far corner of the goal. That left foot of his needs to be embalmed with spices, covered in white strips of cloth and placed in a left foot shaped pyramid and preserved for eternity. With a dead cat too perhaps. 

Song has become some sort of a poor man's poorer cousin's impecunious child's leper friend's penniless Xavi. With the ball at this feet, Song is constantly looking for space, often trying to slide the ball in neat straight lines between rows of defenders with the right weight to beat the defender but not so much as to take it away from a red and white shirt. Needless to say, this throughball putting meets with utter failure 7 times out of 10 (hence the long poverty chain) but when it works it works very well. Before yesterday's perfectly floated ball he did put a perfect pass beating three defenders onto the path of a rushing Walcott a couple of games back. This attempt to pass more penetratingly is a good addition to his game. With Ramsey and Arteta not having the natural talent to match the now cursed Cesc, any help in the creative department from Song is a welcome bonus and he seems to be doing that rather well without compromising his defensive duties. As a person who was recently shown how to spot dark clouds when silver linings shine strongly, I can only mutter to myself that Song along with RVP is one of the players who hasn't signed a contract extension and has only one year to go at the end of next season. Mutter mutter.

Narzidamus - Lord of Destiny

Does anyone else think zonalmarking.net has improved miiiiiiles this season? Sure they were always above average, hence the occasional glance in the first place, but they had articles 10 days after the game, fuzzy logic circuit diagrams which looked damn pretty and admittedly awesome to have churned out but ultimately said a "they won because they scored.....ish...." kinda nonsense, and always had a keen tactical analysis of formation strategy ending with "battle was won in Midfield"... (which of course said fuzzy logic diagram did not support, unless of course Xavi took out his IronMan suit, flew over the final 3rd and bazooka'ed the ball into goal, unfortunately we'll never know since SHIELD deleted those specific fuzzy logic diagrams... I'm not in the habit of painting absurd pictures but I'm still not convinced Xavi isn't secretly Robert Downing Jr....minus heels). Now they put out an article hardly 5-6 hours after the game, talk more formation less fuzzy diagrams, and (here's the clincher, and obviously the only real reason I brought this up..) say stuff I agree with!

They have last night's game cinched, right down to Cesc being a clueless freshman teenager who just had his period (yes you read that correct...) and ruining the entire Barca midfield. Anyone who saw Iniesta suddenly play like an unholy Titan from Gaia's own uterus right after Cesc got plugged deeper inside his own half covering Busquets should send a million hate mails to Pep and get him to trash this miserably failing cescperiment (and shift to the kind that involves untested cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and the odd nerve gas or so). To be honest, it was for all money still looking to be a 2-0 RM win for most of the 1st half, and then maybe 1-3 RM win after Alexis' first goal. Too many sites, blogs, newspapers, and even Carlton Palmer!!, saying RM surprisingly changed tactics to actively press rather than sit back and wait for the counter, nobody seems to know why though... A tactic working perfectly well, demolishing all opposition, one the team was comfortable with and good at....what coach in his right mind would throw a spanner in it and ruin the whole thing?

....No I wasn't talking about Madrid there ....#$$^%&*$%#$$^Cesc#%&*$^#)$##%*$&@#

Attention-Inspired Defeat Syndrome

Can we "preview" games we haven't decided to "view" yet... Although I take solace in the fact that EPL Fans review games they watched youtube highlights of, and generally wax eloquent about teams they've only read about in The Sun... (not the celestial furnace, the London Deccan Chronicle), I'm still going to cautiously call this post the El-Clasico pre-perhapsview. But why Narzi you ask! Why would I not watch possibly the most evenly matched game of the season? OK its possible you were not asking that, being too busy trying to figure out where perhaps ends and view begins in that word (there I've given it away now...), but unfortunately irrespective of how exciting this game might be, I can't help feeling that old familiar feeling of responsibility for the result based on my perhapsview.

I've never seen Sampras lose a game in a grandslam. I've seen him lose his serve, lose his set, lose his nerve, and even lose his hair, but never a match. But he obviously did and has lost, all games I somehow wasn't able to catch, which drove me to the conclusion that his fate was intrinsically tied in with my perhapsviewship... Neither is that a word, nor is that a condition worthy of studying, apart from the phenomenon that I'm quite aware almost everyone has some similar viewship belief. Unfortunately, Valencia seem to be anti-Sampras this year, I've seen ALL 8 of their draws/losses, and the only 3 games this season I Haven't seen were victories. Which brings me to tonight's pre-Clasico conundrum.

I've seen 12 Barca games this season, their 1 loss, their 3 draws, and 8 of their 11 wins. Conditional Probability of me having seen the game, given that they don't win = 1. On the other hand, I've seen 9 RM Games and they've won 8 and drawn 1. Conditional Probability of them not winning given I watch the game is 1/9 by 9/14 = .17. The same number for Barca is .41. So P(Barca not winning tonight) = .41*P(me watching), so to at least match RM's possible loss of .17, my P(Watching) needs to be .17/.41 = .41, and since 1 Dolo has a 50% chance of knocking you out for the night and my conditional probability of watching the game given I am awake = 1, I've healthily dosed myself with 1.22 Dolos. Oh wait...that wasn't for Dolo 650, Dolo 650's chances are 79% so then that means by my calcu...... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

P.S RM to win 2-0 if Cesc starts. Barca to win 3-1 if Villa plays. Barometer bazonka needle spinning mayhem heisenberg turning in grave if both Villa and Cesc play...

SchadenFriday

Nothing like a nice Friday afternoon to sit back, crack open a freshly procured Bailey's and write a blogpost that gives away just how much this joblessness has been missed over the last 2 jobful weeks. By "nothing like" I mean there's a whole lot of better things to do, but doing them during work hours would be callous and irresponsible. Like if Victor Ruiz were to snort cocaine before the Chelsea game, oh wait that's probably what happened... In retrospect, it shouldn't have been too disappointing for a team without Ever Banega, Canales, Pablo, and Bruno to miss out on qualification, but Ruiz and Rami have been too good this season for us to suspect the horrendous nature of the goals conceded.

Chelsea hasn't changed one bit. For all the talk surrounding Vilas-Boas revolutionizing their style and daring to attack in the face of media/fan discontent and play free flowing football, they never had less than 9 players sitting deep. Tino Costa is a great passer, but unlike Banega, he can neither dribble into space, turn away from pressure, nor pass into feet and exchange 1-2's, instead finds his strength in through-balls and penetrative balls into space (even WE are way past the TWSS on this one by now...). No space, No Tino. Feghouli sucks and probably couldn't even get on the Chelsea squad!! (ironic laughter in coughing bursts..) Meanwhile, Soldado basked in the incredible over-rating that is being showered on him this season like a God's overfull bladder, Barragan (a Liverpool mole) used his opportunity to show Chelsea that with his brainless incessant crossing, he would be a great winter signing for them, and Jonas did what he usually does - nothing. For someone of his passing ability, and by virtue of supposedly playing "in the hole", it was shocking to see that the first time he dropped back to link up with a shut-out MF was on 36 minutes, after which he promptly disappeared again for the rest of the game.

While Albelda and Alba toiled away at their usual high levels, and Tino stoically continued to try through balls between the few hair-width gaps Chelsea could manage despite having a final third player density of 3 per cm square, the rest of the team just sat down and waited for the whistle. It isn't often I review a defeat to an EPL side without the prime villain being painted as stupid refereeing, ruffian behavior, ugly direct football, and negative tactics (although the latter 2 were true...), but this was a ridiculously bad performance by Valencia. I knew something sinister was in the air right from the buildup when a bigot like Carlton Palmer said "Valencia are playing great football" and predicted a 2-1 victory for them! Even the first Drogba goal wasn't enough to make me lose hope, until of course they impotently prodded away at Chelsea's vagina-dentata for 30minutes and then Ruiz invited Ramires for a friendly buttrape.

You know it wasn't the run-of-the-mill loss to an EPL side when even the twin Manchester knockouts weren't celebrated in nearly enough pomp and splendor as they deserve. To be honest, with Valencia gone, Barca are the only interest left in the UCL - and I'd much rather ManU made it through so there might be a chance to watch Barca maul them again. Then again, there's always Chelsea, Arsenal, and Inter for them to maul, and now Valencia joining Atletico, Bilbao (and ugh..Sevilla) to challenge ManU,C in Europa! Nothing like a nice Friday afternoon to sit and draw disturbingly violent images of Barca and Valencia players dressed in red underwear and golden shields and spears dismembering Chelsea/Arsenal and ManU/ManC players respectively dressed in Persian whatever it is Persians used to wear back then...