A worried Arsenal Fan.

I wrote this on the 8th of August..after watching the Charity shield game the previous day..did not get time to post it but finally have..enjoy.

It’s the eve of my birthday and instead of preparing for the festivities ahead,I just had to write about this club that I’ve come to hate the fact that I love,this much.

Lets get to it then,on Sunday I,like many of you here watched the community shield game for one of two reasons. Just cause you had missed the football weekends or as a gooner to gauge our opponents ahead of the season. It was a game of two halves I must say.First half,Man city’s sheer strength,power and grit saw them take a two goal lead into the break,deserved or not is not the point. This half worried me as an arsenal fan,I kept asking myself how Koscienly,Gibbs,Wilshere hell even Vermaelen would handle Balotelli,Yaya Toure,Micah Richards,De Jong and the other watu wa mjengo they have. These guys were banging Vidic,Rio,Evra,Carrick off the field at every opportunity. So at the end of the first half,I was confused. I laughed at the manure fans (I never let such chances go by,lets face it they are very few of them these days) but was really worried at the fact that we had to face Man city a minimum of two times next season. How did the swahili wise men put it,’ukiona mwenzako akinyolewa…?’ exactly.

So with the second half I expected more of the same from city but had a keen eye on what Saf would do to try and stop hawa wasee wa mjengo! I had to confirm whether the substitutes he had made were actually correct. You are bullied off the ball and what do you do? Replace your old heads with younger overall lighter players. At that point I was sure Saf had found Mr.Bean’s supply,it took a whole ten minutes for my ordinary football mind to realise what the gaufer had just done. He had replaced the old, familiar and rather comfortable with the young,hungry and more passionate. All of a sudden the mjengo guys were being run rugged around the ground with crisp quick touches and movement off the ball. Whenever they had an opportunity on the ball they were being pressed,no the right word is gang tackled out of it.These kids were like hyenas out there. So I wondered what saf would have told the young lads he brought in,well simple really “You want a chance..here it is prove yourself!” Here is a player who knows that there is a ‘better’ player ahead of him and this might be the only chance he has of playing first team football in a while.(not unless you are Rio’s sub ofcourse!) Do you think he’ll give a rat’s ass whether it’s a mjengo guy or a steel pole ahead of him? He’ll bite his way through if he has to! After this half I was a really really really worried young man.. 

Quickly to my point before you start checking your address bars,yes this is still Kenyan Gunners,the Arsenal blog. What Saf did,is prove le boss wrong on a few fundamental points that he makes. The major one being that experienced players kill the development of the young crop. This principle has seen us lose Ljumberg,Pires,Henry,Gilberto..(I’ll cry if I go on) with the promise that we have young players with loads of talent to fill in. But who do they have to look upto? The difference between say Wilshere and Cleverly no this will not bring it out the way I want to,Jack is several steps ahead of the ka ‘clever’ guy. Rafael and Gibbs,the kid from samba has the likes of Vidic,Evra as role models to look upto. Gibbs on the other hand has Squillaci! And no the Verminator is not yet there in terms of experience. The difference between these two sets of kids is that the Manure set are more hungry,determined and dare I say more focused than the kindergarten we are running. Our kids are spoilt,they have an unlimited number of chances,they know that even if they fuck up this weekend the manager doesn’t have much of a choice than to stick with them. Thus they get comfortable,it’s like taking two hunters to a jungle give one an unlimited number of spears and the other,just one. The  first guy will be like our Kenyan police,trigger happy! He'll shoot at anything he/she sees they’d be reckless,the other dude will be more careful,precise,he wont make a shot until it is beyond doubt that he is going to make the kill. Now you get it..

These kids as much as they are talented,more than the manure ones by far if I may add,lack the driving force to realise their respective potentials as individuals and as a group. How do we rectify this? In my humble opinion which has been floated severally..is bring in some old heads and do it now. The kids will now have a hard time securing a regular position in the team thus they’ll work harder! Then maybe I can stop almost peeing my pants every time I watch other teams play. And as if they were reading this post,Arsenal have just confirmed the signing of Alex Oxlade Chamberlain from Southampton..yes another kid (18). For a fee growing to up to £17M anyone say Matta somewhere? Don’t get me wrong this kid is dynamite (just like the rest of them) and will add a new dimension to our game fast and direct. (don’t we already have that? Read Walcott,Gervinho,Miyaichi) Why risk £17M on a kid who has played  43 games scored 11 goals and created 9 others in the second division when you could get a world class defender maybe even two (this is Wenger after all!) who can..I don’t know help us with our real problem?!! Okey am not the manager here,so let me hope that I am wrong and all this makes sense in September or even better May 2012.

Looking at this from another angle though,the bean man is adding lots of pace to our attack,last season we were guilty of being one dimmensional and closed down way too easily. Imagine Alex and Miyaichi coming on from the bench in the 75^th minute…

With that ladies and gentlemen..a happy birthday to me oh and…

KWISHA!          

P.S If I were you,I'd start getting rid of my Cesc and Nasri Merchandise like right now!!