Reminiscent of a 1994 Graham team; Did Arsene forget about Theo's injury?; Don't blame Aliadiere

I'm really not in mood to write too much today. I'm still sickened by our dire performance yesterday. It was like a performance from a George Graham team in 1994.

Wenger said this of the performance : "We are jaded physically and, although we created plenty of opportunities, the final ball was not good enough. This month has been mentally very hard because we lost against Blackburn in the FA Cup in the last minute, we lost against Eindhoven in the Champions League in the last minute and we have lost here in the last minute."

Indeed, the final ball was horrendous. It also doesn't help when in reality your full backs are playing like extra centre-halfs, your wingers are playing as full-backs, and as a consequence your strikers are playing in midfield. In effect, your strikers are looking to play a ball to... well, nobody really!

The Irish Independent reports that Walcott is out for the season:"You can see that now. He was on for only 10 minutes and his shoulder popped out, you cannot play football like that."

Two things bother me about that report. Firstly, we all knew Theo's shoulder liked to pop out: So why is this news? Secondly: Why was he playing? Didn't Arsene know?

In yesterday's blog, I ranted about the defensive selection.

Goodplaya, on the other hand, gives an accurate assessment of the midfield and forward selection:

"Wenger’s front six at Goodison had three goals from 69 Premiership starts."

That would be a shocking statistic even for a team content with 17th place.

And before the rest of us hop on the already crowded 'Blame Aliadiere' bandwagon , we should perhaps reflect on Goodplaya's assessment of the much-maligned striker's performance.

Aliadiere: Missed one good chance, which contrary to what Andy Gray claimed, did appear to skip up. In a struggling side, Aliadiere has hardly set the world on fire when given his chance. But equally, his general play has not been so bad. 6

I normally dread an upcoming international-break as it usually interrupts the purr of a smoothly running Arsenal engine. On this occasion, I'm hoping Arsene remembers how to start the damn thing... or buys some petrol or something. Whatever it is mechanics do on those occasions

Ah, that's a bloody awful analogy. I'm off to Paris for a few days. See you all this weekend.

Wenger's dodgy defensive selection costs Arsenal at Goodison Park

As loath as I am to doing this, I feel as if I can do nothing but rant against Wenger's very odd team selection in the 1-0 defeat to Everton at Goodison Park today.

All of Arsenal's problems stemmed from the back-four that Arsene chose today. It's very hard to escape the fact that three of the four defenders were playing out of position. Hoyte, a right back, was playing at left back. Touré, a centre-half, was playing at right-back. Gilberto, a centre midfielder, was playing centre half.

I always think that you should keep the amount of players playing out of position down to the bare minimum to prevent confusion. I think Arsene decided against this today - and it showed.

Gallas is first and foremost a centre-half; but he is also a very competent left-back. Why not start the French man on the left and allow Hoyte to play at his natural right-back where he is far more comfortable? Touré would then be allowed play as a centre-half, where his performances are always of the highest standard.

By my reckoning that would be only one player out of position - Gilberto. Having said that, why couldn't Senderos start in centre half? Has he been dropped? Is he injured? I agree that he has put in some dodgy performances of late, but I'd rather see four players playing in their natural positions.

Gallas has made it clear that he prefers playing at centre-half; but he is a damn good left back. I can only hope that this stated preference did not affect Arsene's selection today.

The consequence of that defensive selection was that we were lacking any sort of attacking option from the full-backs. With Toure a natural centre half and Hoyte on the wrong side, it looked like we were playing with four central defenders.

I think that both our wingers ended up getting sucked back into more defensive positions. This meant that both Aliadiere and Baptista looked more like wingers/midfielders as they constantly dropped back to receive the ball. They were involved in the build up of every Arsenal attack. Ideally you would hope that your strikers are at the end of an attacking move.

Aliadiere really should have done better with a great chance in the second half; but he knocked it over the bar.

Arsene then made a crazy substitution by replacing Aliadiere with a winger whose shoulder, we were told days before, regularly pops out in training. Sure enough, moments later, Walcott was clutching his shoulder in agony.

My firm belief is that if you are chasing a victory, you leave as many strikers as possible on the pitch, Having said that, Aliadiere looked like he was playing as a midfielder due to defensive problems mentioned earlier. No doubt the French striker will take the blame for today's defeat.

Sorry Arsene, but for maybe the third time in ten years, I think you got it seriously wrong today. Having said that, I was too lazy to get out of bed to write a preview. So who am I to talk?