Dont know how many of you know this but arsenal played a behind closed doors friendly against a very young birmingham eleven and drew 1-1. The team sheet was as follows: Fabianski; Jenkinson, Djourou, Squillaci, Santos; Ozyakup, Chamberlain; Gervinho, Park, Benayoun; Chamakh. Park scored the only goal but considering the gap in age and experience btw the two teams i would think thats a pretty poor result. Despite scoring park missed some good chances and gervinho was once again wasteful in particular blasting one chance wide with the goal gaping. What do you guys make of it?
Important thing is some of those got some match practice, Santos needs it. And Gervinho and the Ox need it ahead of the City game.
thats true but it was still disappointing nonetheless. Though we did create quite a few chances but couldnt finish any of them off. Park did score though which was a positive but the journalist at the match said chamakh was largely ineffective.
on paper, that is a very good B team, if only most of those players played good rather than cr@p, or maybe many of them are cr@p?
Give him time, remember it took Nasri 2 seasons to finally come good for us, and off course he turned into a mercenary and then blew it all. You can see there is a lot of potential in Gervinho once he gets his game right. We were starting to see glimpses of it before the ACN.
i'm not happy with the result either but gervinho deserves more time. Remember nasri in his first season was average too. About the game it might have been a reserve game but that was our entire qpr bench and this game may dictate whether they get a shot at the frist team. Other than park and AOC (provided the assist and was decent in midfield) they didnt give wenger too much of a headache tbh. Benayoun only started against spurs because he did really well in the preceding reserve game.
gervinho vs mali hopefully he can replicate this form in the near future. When will he play like this for us? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCwFPyRdzHg
I guess they don't play together enough and it's probably hard to get yourself motivated too. The only inclusion i find odd is OXO, he is already playing well so why play him?
Id assume they were just focusing on fitness etc anyone that's ever played football and in a match where you don't need to win or a friendly, you "piss about" try things that you wouldn't normally, fancy flicks, super runs etc or just plainly don't really bother do much and theres also the fact that our team is a bunch of random players, and the birmingham team is a TEAM and playing against bigish name players andddd some of ours are ****e.. Oh, and Gervinho has been great! alot of RVPs brilliance this season has been down to him, especially in the earlier part of the season when Gerv run everyone ragged, set up about 5 chances a game and had 1/2 himself!
Don't mind that these players are playing reserves - match fitness is good. The tiredness thing is way way over played.
What worries me is that our two best options for playing on the left wing (Oxo / Gervinho) both played - I hope this does not indicate that RAMSEY will start on the left again. Disaster if so!
I don't know about Gervinho being great, but I do like his direct running and the ease he gets past players. I hope he can click into gear and start converting some of his chances. I am a fan.
