Jamie Carragher Is A Wanker

I used to be a big fan of Carragher. He used to make mesmerising tackles, throw himself on the line and be the master at making inch perfect tackles. Now he isn’t. He pulls back and tugs on players because his pace and tackling has deteriorated. He does not know what to do, therefore in an act of severe desperation he man handles the opposition. And 90% of the time he gets away with it. Refs turn a blind eye to it because Liverpool and Carragher’s reputation is seen as clean; he isn’t classed as a diver, as a cheat or as a dirty player. He is loved by the media and plays for a team loved by the media due to it’s history. Thus refs are more lenient to him. They won’t admit it but we all know they are.

How long can Jamie keep bringing players down without getting penalised for it? Not sure. But Liverpool are dead lucky Jamie was not penalised twice against Everton 2 weeks ago. And even more recently last week.

Tonight, Arsenal played Slavia Prague. We drew 0-0. This is a good result. Arsenal went to Prague without 4 key players, two of which were rested. To leave the country without 4 key, experienced players has a massive psychological effect on players, it leaves them feeling drained and makes them think, ‘Can we win this game?… Is our team going to be good enough?… Have we got enough experience on the pitch?’. It makes players ask these sorts of questions, and when players question the team, there is a problem. Luckily there was no problem tonight.

The team was:

Almunia, Diarra, Gallas, Song Billong, Clichy, Walcott, Silva, Denilson, Diaby, Eduardo, Bendtner

This is a young team. But I find myself saying that every week. Therefore, this is a younger team than usual, and to be saying that when our average age is already around 23, it very worrying. But we are winning so I won’t worry at the moment. Bendtner still hasn’t matured, Denilson in the middle is vulnerable and Walcott is inconsistent. Prague deserved to win but an excellent display from Almunia saved our blushes. We should have lost tonight, but we haven’t. Therefore we have improved. Last year we would have lost because we didn’t know how to grind out results. Now we do. Now we can score in the 93rd minute against Man Utd. Now we can go to Prague and grind out a 0-0 with a very, very young team.

We play Reading on Monday. Reading aren’t as good as they were last year. But they will stay up. Reading are a good team, they are not individuals. Steve Coppell knows they have to work as a team so before their first game of the season, he gathered them in the dressing room and said to the players, ‘Listen, we have 11 players on the pitch. Some are better than others, some are not. We cannot rely on 1 player. All 11 players must play together.’ The Reading players looked at each other in amazement and said to each other, ‘He’s right you know, we must play as a team’. That’s what they are doing. Reading at this stage have exactly the same amount of points they had last season. However it doesn’t seem like it because Steve Sidwell has left and the Reading stadium is half empty this season compared to last season.

Will we win? Maybe. We have a good chance. Hypothetically, we should. Realistically, Reading will be fired up for it. Wenger needs to pick his team carefully, he needs to make sure we keep our momentum going. After all, a famous person once stated the obvious by saying, ‘Once the ball stops rolling, it come to a standstill’. This obvious statement reveals much more than we see at first instance; once we lose, our momentum is lost. Once momentum is broken, we shall see whether Arsenal are truly the ’special’ team everyone is making us out to be.

Ramin