Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger in all he does » Could Man U or Chelsea have won a game like this? No chance!

By Walter Broeckx

I have read somewhere over the internet that the pundits in England had a hard night. I can understand that. How can you explain Arsenal beating Porto with 5 -0 when you have been saying a whole season how bad we are.

And then to realise we played without Cesc, Gallas and Van Persie. Players who when fit always would have started in such a game. Like our match commentator said before kick off: the spine of the Arsenal was completely out for yesterday’s game and one never knows how a team can cope with such a situation. Let’s take MIOU for a game without Ferdinand, Scholes, Rooney in a game like that. Let’s see how Chelsea would cope in such a game without Terry, Lampard and Drogba. Would they win? Possibly. Would they win with 5-0? Doubt it.

The game against Porto showed another glimpse of what Arsène Wenger is trying to build.

I think he is trying to build two teams. Two equally strong teams that he can field any time when he wants and what ever team he picks they will be as good as anyone.

If you look at our midfield yesterday we had Song, Diaby and Nasri and they are 22 years old. Another combination could have been, if some of those were fit, Cesc, Denilson and Ramsey. That is even a younger combination. If all those players are fit we have 6 people who can play in midfield for 3 places. And the best thing is their age. I think those 6 are the youngest combination at that level. All at the beginning of their career and showing their amazing skill, technical ability, vision and above all desire.

If we can keep these 6 players together for the next  years we will have a team that can beat the whole world in that period of time. And don’t forget there are still other players that are waiting to come through.

As others will be highlighting the performances of Bendtner for his hat-trick. We all knew he was saving his goals for tonight’s game, didn’t we. Others will be lyrical about the Nasri performance. And rightly so. He played like Cesc and I even forgot that Cesc was sitting in behind the bench biting his nails until the showed him on TV. Nasri’s goal was one of the best you will ever see I think. Nasri is no new Zidane.  No in 10 years time he will be the new standard in football in France and over the world.

I will be putting the spotlight on Rosicky this time. I have always been a great admirer of him even when he played in the Bundesliga for Dortmund. He was such a nice player to watch and I really loved it when he came to The Arsenal. He was the player that scored my first goal at the Emirates in my first game at the Emirates. I even loved him more for that. When he hobbled off the field more than 2 years ago we didn’t know how long his absence would be but it has cost us a lot.

It looked at one point that he would be lost forever for professional football but in his quite way he worked his way back. He got a number of setbacks and I think for most of us it would have been the end for his career. But not for Rosicky. He kept on working, kept on fighting. When he played in our first friendly at the start of the season I was happy but I really feared if he would last. He picked up some little injuries every know and then and I sometimes feared he just wouldn’t make it back completely.

When I was at the Burnley game I saw that he was back completely. When he got the ball he turned and twisted like in the old days. In the first half he only could be stopped by numerous fouls. But with his past medical history I was thinking that he would be on the bench today to take a rest. Wenger did otherwise and put him on the field. And again he did what he is so good at. Strong with the ball at his feet, great vision and above all working hard for the team and willing to do this in the shadow of other players who stand in the spotlight for the next days.

Wenger kept his faith in Rosicky and even gave him a new contract. And we can all thank him for that. With his experience on and off the field he is one of those players whose contribution goes further than just his performances on the field. He is one of the players who can help those magnificent 6 young midfielders I mentioned before to become even better. He also can show them how dark the night may be sometimes, at the end the sun will come back to shine. He was one of the leading persons in his national team and I really think he is more than just a player for Arsenal.

So I like to salute Thomas Rosicky for his hard work on and off the field, and I know he will give us something extra in the weeks to come and all this with a friendly smile on his face and in the knowledge that he beat the injury demon and you see the joy on his face when he is playing. Maybe even he never expected to be out there again so you can see he enjoys it and a player who is enjoying himself is a player that is giving his best.

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NOTE RE THIS COMING SATURDAY (that’s the one after Friday and just before Sunday and runs over a period of hours):

You may have been inconvenienced in the last few days by finding that the Untold site has gone down a couple of times.  We’ve tracked this back to something rather simple: the readership has just shot up again.

God knows where all these people keep coming from, but Hi guys, how you doing?  Glad to have you join us.  Etc, etc.

Anyway, we have a problem because the latest rise in readership has overloaded our server, and we are going to have to add another four billion trillion gigsandwiches or ramraiders or something.  This will happen on saturday (not ideal for Untold, but there is a business called Hamilton House Mailings to consider, and it is the best time for the money making side of the operation.)

So for much of this coming Saturday there will be no Untold Arsenal.  I am shocked and devastated by this state of affairs, not to say mortified beyond belief, but there it is.  People will keep reading this stuff, so we have to move with the temporal anomalies (or anemones) (or something).

To be technical about it, all being wonderful and well Untold will work ok until Saturday morning, then vanish, and then reappear.

But seriously, you wouldn’t believe the readership figures we have just been getting this month.  I am overwhelmed by everyone’s support.

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ARSENAL IN THE FUTURE

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ARSENAL IN THE PAST…

• Arsenal’s darkest hour
• The days when football journalists could write, entertain and make us laugh (a true newspaper report about Arsenal in the 1930s)
• “Making the Arsenal” – the novel.  The most extraordinary book about Arsenal ever.  And that’s unofficial.  Available from Amazon.co.uk and from the publishers direct.

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Untold Arsenal is published by Gigsandwich Temporal Anemones of Basingstoke and the Micrododo Publishing Ziggurat of Croydon