Sour times

Where else to start this morning but the rather rough treatment of Emmanuel Eboue yesterday afternoon? Some of you reading this blog will be aware that Emmanuel is far from being my favourite player, but no Arsenal player should be subjected to the kind of treatment that he was yesterday. There have been targets for the fans over the years, in my time Perry Groves and Pascal Cygan are two that spring to mind, but I don’t ever remember a player being barracked to the extent that he had to be substituted. Well, not apart from Alex Song.

I think that the nature of this incident, whilst obviously to do with Eboue’s reputation as a player who is… well, a bit of a cheat really, is also rooted in the frustration that Arsenal fans are feeling this season – the frustration of hearing about the money that was availale to Mr Wenger, but not spent in the summer and then reading articles like the “Eboue is a pass master” on Arsenal.com, the frustration of seeing a team that came within a game of lifting the league title struggle unneccessarily and the frustration of having to fork out around £50 to it in the Upper Tier for games like yesterday’s. Which we did win of course.

The pricing at the stadium is something I keep coming back to, but it really is a shame that Arsenal haven’t realised that whilst people might have been happy to pay £50 to watch Patrick Vieira, Robért Píres, Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp, et. al, £50 to watch the current team is taking the piss just a little bit. Especially in today’s financial climate. So when they charge £50 and up in the Upper Tier, they are also going to get certain types of fan, the type of fan perhaps who won’t support the team when they need it, the type of fan who has come to be entertained, the type of fan, in fact, who will boo one of his “own” if he feels the player is not up to the job.

Sour times, indeed.

Amongst all of this, it might be easy to forget that Arsenal won the game yesterday and so recorded back to back wins in the Premiership for the first time since Kennedy was assassinated, or something like that. A very smartly taken goal by Emmanuel Adebayor was the difference in the end and whilst the woodwork came to Wigan’s rescue twice, denying Ade and Denilson, Wigan had a very good shout for a penalty turned down, when Kolo got a bit busy.

As Steve Wilson said on his commentary, we certainly have seen those given. Manuel Almunia also made a good save from Melchiot. On the flip side of that, Bacary Sagna was unlucky not to score with a near post header reminiscent of the one he did score gainst Chelsea last season, whilst Robin van Persie might have had a couple of goals to go with his two last Sunday.

Another downer, aside from the Eboue incident, was a ridiculous challenge on Samir Nasri from Palacios. Nasri will be out for the next week at least now, and with Theo Walcott and Tomas Rosicky still on the table, our wide options are so limited that the aforementioned Eboue will surely have to start the upcoming games. Unless Arsène fancies seeing what Jack Wilshere is made of. But I can’t see that happening just yet.