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Reflections on FC Twente

By mac14 on August 29, 2008

Samir Nasri celebrates being the anti-Hleb.

It would be hard to draw any kind of tangible conclusions from Arsenal’s 4-nil second leg win over FC Twente on Wednesday night. That is mostly because McClaren’s side put up no fight unless you count their incessant passing between the backs in their own half for five minutes at a time which either ended in a backpass to the keeper or losing it in their first attempt to actually cross the halfway line. It was like watching a completely different side from the first leg back at Arnem two weeks ago. To be fair, Arsenal looked a completely different from that first half as well.

We needed a decent performance at this point no matter who it was against. The match will give a bit of confidence back to the side especially Theo Walcott who ran riot on both flanks for much of the game and scored a superb goal. It should also give the side a boost having seen Cesc come in for his first competitive minutes and instantly turn a team that looked like Sunderland on Saturday into Arsenal on Wednesday.

Are there problems that need to be dealt with? Yes, of course, and these have been discussed to death. The defense needs improvement, and how sending Senderos out on loan does that I have no idea, and we are short a DM. Danny Fiszman is in the newspapers today saying if Wenger asked him for 30m pounds to sign one player that he would sign off on it, no questions asked. It remains to be seen if Wenger will take him up on this. He may think that the pickings are a bit slim right now and may hope to get through to the January transfer window when there may be more options.

Either way, for many the countdown is on until the transfer window closes as we all hold our breath and wake up each morning hoping to see Alonso’s (or any DM’s) face smiling back at us from Arsenal.com.