It's good to see you're still as lacking in a sense of humour and as unable to take criticism as ever.
You went from complaining about how we have such a short team to immediately proclaiming we'd lose to Barcelona. Forgive me if I naturally assume that the two points must be related, because you're not exactly known for your clarity of posting. I just thought it was rather amusing that you seemed to be saying we were too short to beat one of the only teams smaller than us.
As for your idea of playing 4-4-2 and lumping it down the wings, I'm not sure where to start. Perhaps your strange assumption that nobody has tried a 4-4-2 against Barca yet, and that they'll be therefore completely unaccustomed to it? Or the fact that you repeatedly say we don't have any wingers in the squad, and yet think that somehow the team will transfer to a formation with wingers fine? Or the idea that Maxwell and Alves aren't fast enough to deal with a quick winger formation? Or that conceding a player in the middle, against a team who love to get forward and apss it through teams, will work? Especially when said player will most likely be replaced by the workaholic Nicklas Bendtner in your quest for "punt it long, cross it in" glory? Never mind Big Sam, are you Martin O'Neill?
Cheer up DM, you don't always have to get itchy for a fight when I disagree with you.
Again you suggest I said lump it up the field for wingers, while also having a go at Bendtner. What was the score against Barca last time, let me think, Bendtner... scored one and set up the other two, with most of our good attacks coming from counter attacks bypassing midfield.
itchy for a fight when you disagree with me, you DIDN'T, you ridiculously, as almost every single time completely make up your mind as to what I said. I didn't say we were too short, you said I did and said I was wrong, I didn't say lump the ball up to wingers, you said I did then said I was wrong, etc, etc. See a repeating pattern. Arsenal have a LONG list of shortish central highly attacking players who we play all over the place except their favoured position, I questioned the logic of buying another one to add to the end of a long list. Vela, Bendtner, Rosicky/Arshavin/Theo, Nasri are in that order least likely to play, central players who we force out to the wing, should we spend 10mil on adding someone to the wrong end of that list, really? 10 million on what would be the 7th choice winger at Arsenal, but isn't actually a winger(everything I've seen suggests he likes to get central, play through the middle and most of his goals are scored through the middle).
My main issue with you is, your lack or reading comprehension, you've disagreed with a dozen points in two posts, that I never made.
As for your other suggestings, unfortunately they ignore all logic and the reality of playing Barca.
The teams that do score against Barca don't play through their midfield, the teams that do lose, the teams that go over their midfield tend to lose but get the odd goal, Inter beat them by encouraging them forwards, conceding midfield totally, backing their own midfield into their back four and every now and then breaking hard with a long ball up to their striker, and every time they did, Barca had a problem, and ultimately lost the game. Its pretty simple, look for examples of how to beat Barca.... there is ONE in recent years thats worth looking at, in that example they didn't pack out midfield with crap players in an attempt to win.
Diaby, what did he do against Barca, what about Song, both were utterly rubbish, they had rings run around them and Barca never got out of 3rd gear to do it.
Bendtner on the other hand won header after header against Pique/Puyol, and the nearest player was usually 30+ yards away.
So take Diaby out of midfield, where he did nothing, put a striker alongside Bendtner, maybe just maybe they'll have some success. Alves has pace, but can't defend and no he usually doesn't get back in time, Maxwell is less fast, and often doesn't get back.
We play Barca at their own game and try and win midfield, we lose, simple as that, we play our strongest and best team, in our strongest formation, which would also put our most useful players against their weakest, sounds like pretty good tactics to me.
Again I'll point out, Arsenal get beaten/concede goals frequently to the SAME tactic, other worse teams don't come and try to outplay Arsenal in midfield, they work out our weakness and play towards exploiting it. Ignoring their weakness and playing into their strength, is just about the stupidest thing we could possibly do.
..not bothered about the fee its more the fact of Mancini clearing the team of Mark Hughes players. Fortunately he signed a few excellent players in Kompany, De Jong and Zabaleta.
