Thursday, May 27, 2010

Maroune Chamakh !! and other news.

















Arsenal finally completed the signing of striker Maroune Chamakh .
Chamakh (26), who joins Arsenal from French side Bordeaux, made a total of 293 appearances, scoring 79 goals during his eight years with Les Girondins.
In the 2008/09 league campaign, Chamakh scored 14 goals, helping Bordeaux win the French League title, thus ending Lyon’s seven-year domination of Ligue 1. The Moroccan striker’s fine form continued last season, playing an integral role in helping Bordeaux reach the quarter-finals of the UEFA Champions League, where they finished above both Bayern Munich and Juventus in the Group Stages.
Chamakh told Arsenal.com: "This is a dream come true and a great joy to be joining Arsenal. My goal was always to play in the Premier League and Arsenal was the choice of my heart.
"Without any hesitation, Arsenal was my preferred club. The team and history of Arsenal, they make me dream. My goal was to join Arsenal out of the all the English clubs because it is a club that makes me dream and I have been a fan since I was a child."
Chamakh cant wait to make a debut for Arsenal. Arsenal were linked to signing maroune chamakh way back in january transfer window, when arsenal had a real striker crisis. But they have signed him now finally on a free transfer. 
Chamakh is 6 feet 2 inches tall, will be an ideal alibi to Niklas bendtner in the air, as well as he will complement well with Robin Van Persie with his attacking prowess. 
Much remains to be seen how he will gel into the team. He is known for his towering headers and skills inside the box. 
He added "I'm very excited about playing at Emirates Stadium in front of the Arsenal supporters. I have heard many great things about the stadium and I cannot wait to be playing there in an Arsenal shirt.
"I will give my best to this Club, the Club that I used to support. We have many great players at Arsenal and I will be giving everything to help the team win trophies next season." 
Looks like the boy is all committed to the club and hope to get the best of him here. 
But the problem we really need to strengthen the defense. Our Goalkeeping is awful. We still are looking for good goal keeping options. Players like Robert Green, Gianluigi Buffon, Mark Schwarzer, etc. Possibly Almunia might be shown the door, I feel wenger still trusts fabianski. Vito mannone looks a good goalie for the future, and we must keep him.
One more area, we need to strengthen is our centre backs. With unsure future of William Gallas, we need another strong centre back.
Wenger needs to really get some good defensive players this time. And the fabregas story fails to die down. I personally feel if hes not happy, we must just let him go, and rather collect a heavy sum from barca for his transfer and put it to good use, by getting better established players. 
Yea established, no more youngsters, we need to have a backbone to our team, which is not there right now. Wenger needs to do some serious thinking into this. Meanwhile we can just enjoy the arrival of our new star Maroune Chamakh. Welcome to london lad..

Friday, May 7, 2010

09-10 season.

Yes with still a game left, we can fairly say the season is already over for us. Suddenly there is even a lurking doubt if we will even finish 3rd what with Spurs just 2 points behind us. What went wrong this season is fairly well known but the big question was did we not see this coming?
This season can be fairly put in 2 divisions, good against mid table teams but poor against the top ones. We have lost 9 games this season, conceded more than 40 goals which is the most we have conceded after 02-03 season. Does this not reflect our defensive frailties? A terrific signing in Thomas Vermaelen, did for the initial part suggest that we have a good pairing to cope us with the requirement but unfortunately we had no back up whenever either he or Gallas were injured. The singing of Sol campbell was more so a gamble which paid of but it was never going to be a permanent one. Almunia, Fabianski have turned out to be the jokes of the season for they lack the sheer basics a goal keeper needs- coming out for crosses. The transition of the likes of Diaby, Denilson, Walcott, Vela and Eduardo continues to progress at a snail's pace with no end result in sight. RVP can never finish a full season without getting injured and Arshavin who promised so much, has left a lot to be desired especially in terms of his attitude. With only fabregas, Clichy, Sagna, Sol performing on a consistent basis, Arsenal could never have achieved the expected results. The main reason we lost out this season is also the fact that most players hardly looked interested in playing. Bendtner misses 7-8 chances in a game and then laughs when he gets substituted. Arshavin says we cant win the title as early as in december, even if it may have been true, we cant play with that kind of an attitude. Diaby played as if he is still on the training ground. Rozza is forever injured and Nasri only played well in patches. Even with all this, we were still in the reckoning till the last few games, mainly because we managed to scrape through results and our main opponents kept dropping points. This was a season for us to win, we left it slip yet again. Who should we blame? Wenger for not signing adequate replacements in jan? Players who just dint turn up when it was required the most? Last season we were only fighting for the 4th place and were out of the title race very early. This time around, we could have easily won and that is what hurts the most. What should we do to arrest this slide? This season will be best remembered as the season of so near yet so far.