ESPN: Gunners shoot down Porto
Guardian: Samir Nasri and Nicklas Bendtner fire Arsenal into quarter-finals
BBC Football

What will be a complete waste is if Landon returns only to find the MLS player’s union deciding to strike.

Donovan took a chance on making everyone happy – he signed a new contract with MLS and went on loan to Everton. The loan spell turned out better than he thought it would be but now Everton can’t meet the price that MLS has asked for him. It would have been a different matter if Landon had not resigned and MLS wouldn’t have the leverage they do.

We’re playing the rest of the season for Aaron Ramsey. Its such a stroke of bad luck to lose the young Welshman at this point in the season, but this tragedy-turned-motivation may just be the extra push to get us some hardware. Its all about character and how much you want it at this stage. It was enduring to see all the players wearing “Get Well Soon Aaron” t-shirts prior to kickoff.

Coming into this match against Burnley tonight, we needed to win by 4 goals in order to go level with Chelsea on points but beat them in goal differential. Chelsea were going to have a game in hand after this weekend because they were playing an FA Cup match. Man United were playing Wolves later in the day.

This match would be a coming-out party of sorts for Theo Walcott. He has these games every now and again. He was fantastic. I’m sure I join all Arsenal supporters in wanting these performances to become expected behavior from Walcott. Too often this season, his sprints down the right-hand side fizzle out and result in nothing.

If Nicholas Bendtner had been on his game, the scoreline would have been a lot more. I’m not sure what happened to the Dane. He and Walcott linked up numerous times, only to see his shots go over the crossbar or just wide of the post. You could see the frustration in everyone’s faces by the fourth or fifth attempt.

But, Bendtner’s flubs aside, Arsenal pulled out the 3-1 win. The first goal (34th minute) will probably win goal of the week honors. Samir Nasri floated the perfect ball over the defensive line and Cesc Fabregas ran onto the ball just in time to nutmeg the keeper.

Burnley would pull one back just after half-time.

The second Arsenal goal (60th minute) was Walcott – man of the match himself – finally pulling inside from a run down the right-hand side, and placing the ball ever so nicely in the far corner of the goal. Theo has a tendency to stay outside even though he may outrun a defender and try to cross the ball to another player. It was nice to see him change his normal routine.

The final Arsenal goal, by Andrei Arshavin, was in extra time and an end to frustrations, I’m sure, for the Russian striker. He had numerous chances prior to this. From a short corner kick, he intercepted a loose ball from Eduardo and cut inside. With only a small fraction of the goal open, Arshavin was able to slot the ball just inside the near post.

There was concern with Cesc coming off just before half. Turns out he’s got a hamstring problem and will hopefully be back soon.

Moving on, we’ve got a tough game against Porto in the Champions League on Tuesday. Its at the Emirates but we’ve got a 2-1 deficit to overcome. Then, next Saturday, we’ve got an away match at Hull City, who got blitzed by Everton today.

Who’s soft now? Ha-ha!

Many writers have summed up the reasons why we lost. Arseblog said it best the day after, Slack Arsenal taught a footballing lesson. The plain truth is that Man United wanted it more. Online Gooner had the best technical rundown of why Man United’s use of a winger put Clichy on his heels and why a winger is different from playing someone out wide.

To diagnose the problems and move towards fixing them in time will take Arsene Wenger much time and thought. Plus, he probably won’t agree that these are the problems and chock up our defeat to simply poor playing. To be exact, he now claims that it was a case of still feeling the effects of our Champions League defeat last May. Whatever. Do these players even remember that game? Probably not.

But, in hopes to summarize our shortcomings as I see them, I’ve summed up the following three in sucessive importance (worse to worst).

Left-hand side. Man United were not the first side to figure this out. Last Sunday, Nani was being hailed as the return of Cristinao Ronaldo. As gifted as he may be, the comparison falls very short when you look at how he’s played in other games. The truth is, left-back Gael Clichy and left-mid Samir Nasri made it look easy for Nani. Their attempts at double teaming him, combined with the jeering crowd at the Emirates, made Nani’s determination more effective and troublesome. Several times Clichy was simply outrun and Nasri watched.

Clichy is just coming back from a long injury and may get better as time goes on, given that he hasn’t shown himself to be that much better than the youngster, Armand Traore, he replaced. The most promising left-sided combination so far has been in our first encounter with Bolton where Traore stayed as left-back and Clichy came on for Rosicky (72nd minute) and played in front of Traore at left-mid/forward. My confidence in Nasri is beginning to wane as its never clear if he’s going to give as much as he should nor whether he’s going to help in defense.

Denilson. Its been a week since our defeat and hopefully its been a good recovery period for Alex Song, coming back from the African Cup of Nations, because we sure do need him on the top of his game to run the midfield. Its clear that Song and Aaron Ramsey should be the midfield duo because Denilson isn’t making the transition from young starlet to seasoned veteran that he should be making. He either needs to have some soul-searching on the bench or look to be positioned in another role besides provider on this team. The second goal for Man United came down to his give-away that resulted in a transition the other way, and that was just the most glaring example of his lack of determination.

Goal Keeper. I don’t remember a time in my 13 year history as an Arsenal supporter of there being more clammering by fans for a player to be benched (well, maybe Eboue last season). Its just atrocious that Wenger has allowed Manuel Almunia to be in goal for the time he has been. Of course, there should be trepidation about putting someone as young as Fabianski between the pipes for a match like Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, but Almunia’s confidence has got to be shot and he shouldn’t be risked. Not only does he score own-goals for Man United (more than 1 this season) but it seems like Vermaelen and Gallas don’t have any confidence in him either. I wonder how many points dropped are due to his own-goals and allowing for things to happen that shouldn’t. We need to have someone else back there immediately. This is the most pressing issue for this team.

While these are the three most important deficiencies that need to be addressed and fixed for the Chelsea match tomorrow, there are other minor issues.

Cesc Fabregas must have a good game against Chelsea and while he had glimmers against Man United, their defensive mids did a good job of shutting him down.

Andrei Arshavin must put the ball on frame. In the first 30 minutes against United, he was turning their defenders one way or another but couldn’t even put the ball on goal. If he gets the time and space against Chelsea, he needs to get it there.

Wenger thinks we’re still in a good position and if we can do some damage at Stamford Bridge tomorrow, we’ll be back in the race. I’m sure every Man United fan will be cheering for our side. I don’t know if we’ve got the spirit or the heart to pull together. We’ve got the talent, now its up the players to put my scepticism where it belongs – the trash heap.

Breaking more than a decade of silence, former U.S. soccer coach Steve Sampson said Tuesday he dropped John Harkes from the national team roster two months before the 1998 World Cup because the American captain was having an affair with the wife of teammate Eric Wynalda.

Its honorable of Sampson to keep quiet after so long, especially after taking the blame for the WC 98 debacle.

Wenger notes the changing formation of the game in general. Instead of relying on your strikers for goals where “the midfielders are the guys who bring the strikers alive”, the strikers are the ones who are bringing the midfielders into the action.

“[For example] Robin Van Persie, when he played we always scored three or four goals. He didn’t score too many [himself] but he made a lot. Not only with passing, but with movement and the quality of that movement. Strikers open walls for the deeper players. That is a big part in the modern game.”

Many others, of course, have made the same observation about strikers in football today. I think it was Jonathan Wilson, at the Guardian, who first criticized teams like Barcelona and Man United for becoming less active when they added strong, holding forwards (Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Dimitar Berbatov, respectively). When these teams relied on their mids and wings, they were a more mobile, dynamic attack, but with the addition of “targets” up front, their scoring options actually diminished.

The counter-example to this argument is Chelsea with Drogba and Anelka up front. Both are target forwards, and produce more goals and assists themselves than most teams.

The point is that modern forwards, like van Persie, act more like parts of the midfield. Its just a shame that we’re without him for the season. I wonder what it would have been like with him at this point in the campaign? …