Arsenal Team Talk/Gossip/Rumours Thread

A Primal Nut wrote: »

I dunno Gallas has been a bit unreliable this season - I'd prefer Toure. Good to see Djorou playing well

Its strange - we have a really good defense individually (Sagna and Clichy two of the best full backs in the premiership) yet most people consider defense the weakest part of the team.

Toure will hit form again and Toure, Djourou, Sagna & Clichy will make a great defence.

They've got it all, attacking full-backs, the big stopper, the ball-playing centre back with the occasional belter from 40 yards.

I think they could be great if they all get a run together(without Gallas).

wandatowell wrote: »

you mean Toure yeah? I think he ****es himself/looks panicky whenever he has to "play" football

Wouldnt call him a ball playing centre back.

I respectfully disagree.

Think he's quite good on the ball and he often gets involved breaking from defence when teams do the 11 men behind the ball thing.

Was looking for a youtube to back up my argument cause you can prove anything with a good video clip these days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T77FI4BHNQA&feature=related

Doesn't really prove much apart from he's a total legend.

Seriously, I would love if Arsne settled on the current defence. I think Toure will hit form again with Djourou beside him and Djourou will blossom with Toure beside him.

premierstone wrote: »

Seriously I really think some of you are letting your personal feelings on Gallas cloud your judgement, there is no way in hell that Toure is playing anywhere near as good as Gallas at the moment

Don't think it's personal feelings. Personally, I still like Gallas. He went about some things the wrong way but he went about them his way. If he's not cut out to be a captain then fine but that's not any reason to dislike the guy.

I think Wenger made a mistake by giving him the captaincy but it was a clear option because he is a winner and one of the few old heads in the team. The mistake in my view was not giving it to Cesc in the first place. If your philosophy is one that you believe your young players are up to the task, then surely you must trust them with everything, including the captaincy. To give it to someone based on age is surely to admit that youth is in some ways a deficiency.

On a personal note, I'd like to add that I think the media have done an awful job on Gallas. Constantly the lazy bast**ds have referred to the Birmingham game where:

A:( He spent the preceding week with Sagna after his family bereavement
B:( Eduardo suffered the worst injury we've seen in a couple of seasons
C:mad:Clichy gave away two points in the dying minutes by trying to run the ball out of defence which ..
D:mad: resulted in a penalty that actually wasn't a penalty anyway

Now, I'm not sure if Gallas was aware of the last fact but you have to admit that's a pretty testing time for anyone and briefly he lost control of his emotions.

I think part of Gallas problem is that he's a solitary person, a bit of a loner if you will. When push came to shove, he reacted by separating himself from the team instead of involving them. For me this simply means that he's not a good captain but I wouldn't make any personal judgments about it(except that he's got a good mentality for tennis or something).

Anyway, enter the British media who cited the incident countless times usually with none-to-subtle undertones of 'you need a British captain - not a weak French surrender monkey'.

Note, when John Terry cries after getting knocked out of pretty much everything, it's because 'he wants it so much' and the 'made of British steel' comments die down. Also not much was said of his insane decision to give himself the potentially CL winning penalty ahead of people that can actually kick a ball with accuracy. (I'm not comparing the incidents directly - just trying to point out double standards)

As regards this season, I'm not sure exactly what happened with the media and the transfer of the captaincy. It had clearly become a very difficult job for Gallas who hadn't really clicked with the team. In the end Gallas was dropped for a week without really losing face (just being too outspoken a la Roy Keane), the Captaincy was transferred to Cesc and it all settled down again quite quickly. I wouldn't be surprised if either Gallas alone or Gallas and Wenger orchestrated this in some way because everyone was back to playing with a minimum of fuss quite quickly.

So to sum up, I do like the guy and believe that he's done his best but that this Arsenal team is a group of people 8,9 and 10 years younger than him that he simply didn't gel with. He was great for Chelsea but he had a rock solid, experienced defence around him. Perhaps he simply wasn't ready to lead a defence, or a team for that matter. The only lingering question I have is whether it was a good idea to sign someone for a position that one of our rivals clearly didn't feel they were up to - see also Silverstre.



So, from my totally impartial point-of-view Gallas has simply not been a better player than Toure for Arsenal. He weighs in with the odd important goal but equally he throws up the odd massive defensive gaff at the most inopportune moments.

Gallas' spell in the first team has pretty much coincided with Toure's loss of form and now everyone is willing to admit that they simply can't play together. This means that only one of them can stay at Arsenal because neither of them are squad players.

So, if Djourou is the big stopper, then I think it should be Toure alongside him rather than Gallas. This is because I believe that, playing in the right defence, Toure will recapture his form and be part of a very effective back four for the next few seasons. With everything that's gone on, I think Gallas is halfway out the door already.

I don't think Gallas currently offers us more solidity and besides, I feel that regardless of who we put there, we're going to ship our fair share of goals this season so we may as well do it while getting a future back four settled.