What’s Up With Park Chu-Young?

Sport, due to its physical nature, makes for an injury-prone pastime,
and whilst there is an inherent understanding by sports players that
there is some risk involved, many sports injuries are sustained which
are not the fault of the person playing, and these can sometimes lead to
successful PERSONAL INJURY CLAIMS

nice read, and I agree, especially since I think we are missing something in the scoring department and that Chu might be the answer

I find it funny how people who've never seen him play (in fact, who've never even heard of him before we bought him) want him to play ahead of some more proven players.

After the not so bright start of the season a part of the fanworld
ise up in the arms. Well everyone has the right to be a fan as he likes
it to be. But how wrong they have been all these years is really
amazing.

For years a part of the fans have been crying for “Wenger out” and
almost every player we had on our books had to be sold because he was
not good enough. Every time we won a game they said it mean nothing. The
opposition was poor. The players still weren’t good enough. The manager
still had lost it. And every single player got their own special
insulting nickname. They had to add “shit” or other not so nice
extensions to the name of our players.

And no player escaped from their vile name calling. Even Fabregas was
amongst the victims and this was long before the media campaign to
drive him out started. I think it started together with the campaign to
drive Wenger out. Maybe they thought both of them away and Arsenal would
be broken down completely? I even said at a certain point to them that
if they talked like that about Fabregas and if he would read it, he
would have every right to step on the first plane to Barcelona and go
away from Arsenal. Maybe it would be interesting to know how much the
constant insulting of our players contributes to players leaving
Arsenal.

Anyhow what happened, happened, but the thing is that that part of
the fanbase surely must be considered as well not being the smartest
part of supporters.

Now these days with our bad start they come out and say: “See now, I
told you X years ago and now it happened”. Followed by more doom and
despair for the rest of our days. Now I’m not going to say that I am
happy with our start this season. I can see many and various reasons for
it. But are those who say “I told you so” really that smart?

Let us take the period since we moved to the Emirates as a starting
point. A period in which they have been moaning about all and
everything. And yes we didn’t won anything in those years. But we have
been close to winning on a few occasions. We have played a few semi
finals of the FA cup, Carling cup, Champions League. And we had a very
strong chance of winning the league twice. Last season we were in
contention for the title until we lost our third last game of the
season. And we lost the Carling cup final in a heart breaking way. And
in 2007-2008 we just have been cheated out of the title race.

I didn’t do the ref reviews in those days but I think it would have
been very interesting to have done it by then. I can remember a lot of
strange decisions and strange events going against us starting with the
Birmingham game.  But in all those years almost every season we had the
chance of winning a price. But it didn’t happened at the end and so the
fans who are fans to win prices at all costs are disappointed. I
consider myself more as a long term supporter and I can live with such
things. I like us to win things but as long as the players do their best
on the field, there is nothing more we can demand from them. And we
have to accept defeat sometimes as it is part of football.

But what really baffles me is the fact that in all those years when
we always have been playing for some prize some fans were never
satisfied. And in fact this is really sad I think.

Because in the last 6 years (to use the special media Arsenal
measurement) when we didn’t win anything I have had some great times. I
remember great evenings and afternoons of football that you can hardly
see anywhere on the planet.

I have seen us destroy teams with great football. I have seen us
score goals as if it was nothing. I have seen the most amazing goals
from Arsenal. I have seen great victories. And yes I have known defeats.
And yes I have been disappointed at times after a game. And yes I have
been angry for a moment when a player messed it up and cost us a game.
And I have been very angry when again the ref screwed us and took our
points away.

Defeat is part of the game and I can understand every fan for being
angry when we lost. I could even understand him shouting abuse at the
team for a defeat. Not all of us have the ability to accept defeat
gracefully.

But what is important for a real supporter is that he must learn to
enjoy every win. Or even a hard fought draw. Because if you cannot enjoy
every win then you surely must be a sad person.  How can you be angry
about Arsenal for 6 years and say we are worthless? Didn’t you enjoy the
wins? Did you never felt joy when we won? I’m not saying that I danced
around in my kitchen where I was watching the Olympiacos game last week
when we won but I surely was very happy with the result. So I didn’t
care at that moment about what would happen the next Sunday.

We would lose by a cricket score the “know it all” said after the
Olympiacos game. Now I’m not a person who knows a lot about cricket but I
think that a 2-1 score is not really the average result of a game of
cricket. Or is it?  But for a lot of fans there was no joy after that
win. Or after the Bolton win. Or after any win in fact. Because right
away after we won a game they came out and told us that if we would play
against “Fill in as you like” like that we would face a heavy defeat.

What I don’t get is that some fans are not really able to enjoy a
win. And that is something that most of the “told you so” fans have in
common. It looks to me as if it is a really heavy burden to be an
Arsenal supporter. For me it is for 80 or 90% a constant source of joy
to be an Arsenal supporter and I know and realise how happy I am that I
once chose to be a Gooner. And I can tell you that if we only take last
season I really had some very great moments as a supporter. We have been
trashing a few teams with a high score line. We were the only team that
have won against the two teams that played the CL final.

I even can remember the ecstasy after our win at home against
Barcelona. Or us reaching the final of the Carling cup. Or us winning at
Manchester City. Or us winning against Chelsea at home. Or us winning
against Manchester United at home even without Cesc and Nasri. Those
were great moments last season. And I enjoyed them. And yet the “I told
you so” part of the fans didn’t really enjoy it. Because after those
games they still were moaning. They still were calling for the manager
to be sacked. They still were abusing the players on the internet.

And by doing this they only show us how dumb they are. Supporting a
team means you should be having fun when we win. You should feel happy
when we win. Why support a team when you are unhappy when they win? Be
unhappy when we lose, fine for me. I’m not happy when we lose. But by
just enjoying every win I can promise you, you will feel better. You
will feel happier. Just try it for once. Just for once try to enjoy the
win and leave the moaning aside.

I have been enjoying Arsenal even in those 6 years. And life is short
for us human beings. Not enjoying something for 6 years when you have
every reason to enjoy it is really a stupid thing to do.

I will be in front of my TV when we play our next game. I will be
there to support our Gunners from afar. And when we win the game I will
be thrilled and feel high. Just try it the next time we win a game. But
be warned: it might feel good! But that is the way it supposed to feel.

There has been a little debate going on about the refs in the media.
And I was attracted by the words or  the English Football Association
referees’ committee chairman David Elleray.

Mr. Elleray said and I quote this from the media:

“Last season in the Premier League 98 per cent of offside
decisions were correct. I would defy any manager to claim 98 per cent of
his selection decisions which he has time to think about were correct
or that any player achieved 98 per cent success rate with his shots,
tackles or passing the ball. Two per cent of so-called mistakes
attracted huge publicity.”

Now I don’t know where Mr.  Elleray got this number from. Does the FA
and the English Football Association Referees do research on this?
Because if they do this then Mr. Elleray surely would have the numbers
of wrong decisions on goals. And on penalties. So please Mr. Elleray
after having said A (wrong offside calls) give us now B (wrong goal
decisions) and C (wrong penalty decisions).

I think it is a must that they come out in the open and open say that
they do the research and have the numbers and then given them.

Because if they don’t do the research…how can he come out in the open
and say such a thing? How can he claim the 98% right offside decisions?
I know the PGMOL work with an organisation that looks at how the ref
runs in games and how many decisions they take. But they have confirmed
me a while back that they don’t look at the fact if the decisions were
correct or not.

So does the FA, the PGMOL, the EFAR check the decisions? Then they
need to come out in the open with it.

But as the regular readers know by now we on Untold do check the refs
and their decisions. And by any coincidence we do check the offside
decisions. It is somewhat a little number hidden somewhere between all
the other numbers we do check them.

But this checking is happening in the following way, just like the
other things: if we cannot see enough evidence that the ruling was wrong
we count them as correct.

And  I must say that most of the rulings are considered correct. And
this because …well… the replays we can see of those calls are around 1
replay on average per game. Sometimes 2 and in a seldom case we have 3
replays. And the replays sometimes show the ref is correct and sometimes
not. But on many occasions we cannot really check the decision and then
we just count them as correct.

So what do we have on the offside decisions so far this season? Do we
have a 2 % wrong calls? Well I thought it would be interesting to
compare what we have found so far and see if we come near the 98%
correct decisions that are claimed by Mr. Elleray.

Game
Ref
Offside

Newcastle-Arsenal
Walton
100

City-Swansea
Dean
100

Stoke-Chelsea
Halsey
100

Liverpool-Sunderland
Dowd
100

Arsenal – Liverpool
Atkinson
80

WBA – Utd
Jones
100

Man U – Tottenham
Probert
100

Chelsea – WBA
Mason
83,33

Man Utd- Arsenal
Webb
85,71

Bolton – Man City
Jones
100

Tottenham – Man City
Dowd
100

Liverpool – Bolton
Probert
100

Arsenal -Swansea
Atwell
100

Chelsea – Norwich
Jones
100

Man City – Wigan
Atkinson
100

Stoke – Liverpool
Clattenburg
100

Sunderland – Stoke
Probert
100

Bolton – Man U
Marinner
100

Blackburn- Arsenal
Marinner
75

Fulham – Blackburn
Webb
100

Man U – Chelsea
Dowd
50

Fulham – Man City
Clattenburg
100

Liverpool – Wolves
Friend
100

Arsenal – Bolton
Clattenburg
83,33

Tottenham – Liverpool
Jones
100

Chelsea – Swansea
Dean
71,43

Stoke – Man U
Walton
100

Everton – Liverpool
Atkinson
100

Total

2528,80

Number of games

28,00

Average % correct

90,31

Now and I must repeat that at least an estimation of around 60 to 70%
of the offside decisions are not really to be checked by our ref
reviewers because we just don’t have the opportunity to review them like
they should be reviewed. And as a result we count them as correct.

But with this for the ref very favourable point of view we end up
with only 90,31% of correct offside decisions in the 28 games that we
have reviewed so far this season.

And offside decisions can be very important in games. We all remember
how MU won with 2 offside goals against Chelsea a few weeks ago. And we
also have lost several points when linesman made the wrong decisions.
So in such an important matter we should make sure that the decisions
are almost perfect.

Mr. Elleray claimed 98% correct and if we would get that number then
we all would be very happy with that. But after reviewing 28 games so
far this season we come up with a bit lower number. We can prove our
numbers. We can prove that it is only 90,31% so far in the games we
reviewed.  And as said I really think the number would be lower if we
could have access to all camera angles in all games. But can Mr. Elleray
back up his claim of 98%?

If not then this is another example on how people put up a number
just out of nothing and then by just using their own name and authority
they try to make the people believe it is correct.

So how lucky we are that we can check the claim of Mr. Elleray with
the real numbers on the field. And they don’t look as nice as Mr.
Elleray tried to paint them. Time to speak up completely now Mr.
Elleray: DO YOU CHECK THE CORRECT DECISIONS?
 

apparently he has to return to korea in 2 years? any truth to that?

He is obliged to do military service, so yes it's true. The only people who are exempt are Olympic gold medalists, but I wouldn't bet on that happening.

Any Olympic medal will exempt him from service.

Park was bought as the cheap replacement to St. Nick but because we only play with one striker at the moment there isnt much of a place for him in the team. If you remeber last season Van Persie was injured for the first half meaning that Chamakh had to start and St.Nick was his faithfull replacement in all other cups and in the EPL if he was needed. Now Van Persie is fully fit and Chamakh is playing the old St Nick role deeming Park Useless.

But if you look at our standard injury rate, Park will be on pretty damn soon!

I think you're right to some degree, he should be getting more time or at least some time in the senior squad, however I think he will get to shine in the domestic cups. Once he shows what he has there then he may be up to scratch to compete with Chamakh and RVP. However I don't think he has had the opportunity to shine, for example RVP and chamakh would have to be injured or doubtful for him to get a look in as the out and out striker which hasn't happened. Perhaps there is more to it, maybe he is homesick, troubles with learning English and communicating with the squad, settling in with the squad, not ready for the ruthless English premier league or something like that. It's not like we get informed of much behind the scenes. 

what happen to Park?

Sell jersey's to korean fans. thats what. 

switch to a 4-4-2. RvP and Park up front, Rvp in the false 9 role. would solve the fabregas problem and give our midfield a bit of space. if we have a bazillion wingers/strikers, why not play a formation that would let us utilize the players we have?

Wenger nowadays is not brave enough to make a decision...I think we should go back to 442 formation and thats the best formation we have for groups of player we have. Ashavin should get more role in the center of midfield and thats the best place when he plays for his country.
The stubbonness of wenger has blind his vision and become clueless.....

Wenger appears to be a person who thinks out of a box, but when it comes to team selection he always play it safe. His selection is always based on seniority regardles whether they are in form or not. Arshavin is one clear example. He is deteriorating faster than Rosicky and everyone can see that. He is too predictable and no longer has the confidence to take on defenders. Wenger seems to forget that if not for Fabianski's injury last year and Almunia's clangers Sczesny will not be Arsenal's No 1 right now. Sczesney has proven that he is better than Fabianski and Almunia, but if Wenger had his way with the seniority system, Sczesney would be stuck in the reserves or loaned out. 

I agree.  People want to look back in hindsight and give Wenger credit for going with Wojo. But the reality is that he was trying to haggle to get Schwarzer up until the deadline last summer, and then it proceeded as you said.  Wojo only got his place after a couple of injuries and bad games.  

And you don't want to give him credit for anything.

Numpty if I ever saw one.

The story with Park is that he isn't fit enough yet. 

He has had reserve games, where he has had to be pulled off after 60mins.

Doesn't explain why he isn't getting 10 mins at the end of a PL match, though.

He hasn't played any Reserves games. He's only played the one Carling Cup match. 

Even if he wasn't yet match fit, the argument jg is making is why not bring him on in the last 20 minutes when we're struggling? 

He was fit enough to play 79 minutes against Poland on Friday and score twice.  So I dunno.

He's at full fitness now. He didn't have full a preseason because of his transfer issues with Monaco. The Korean press reported that in September, he asked to be excused from practice with his national team because he couldn't keep up.

So long RVP stays uninjured Park won't play. 

he was poached in a hotel which has now put relations with Lille at an all time low and now we have seen Hazard join Real madrid. Wenger OUT!

could be a lot of tickets available as I don't see to many getting to a 12:30 kickoff on a Friday????????

Wow, some of the comments on here are pretty alarmist, in my opinion, considering what we are talking about is a 2 million striker being a back-up and not a starter. I would hardly say this qualifies as a terrible buy on Wenger's part, or a terrible mistake not to make him first-choice. It's great that Park has been playing well for South Korea is great, but it's been against pretty abysmal competition, and I think if he turns out to be a good back-up striker and squad player would qualify as a pretty damn good buy for the money.

JET had like 10 in 6 in the reserves last year and he is on his way out the door.  I highly doubt many people have seen Park play enough to rate him above Chamakh or Theo.  I guess it just reflects the utter lack of trust that many supporters have in the manager's judgement that they would take his lack of games as evidence of Arsene's pigheadedness.  

JET is actually out the door -- his loan to Ipswich was a permanent move/sale. But I think you're exactly right about people's rationales for this.

Even worse he has to go in  the army in 2 years, so no matter how good he is, he will be leaving. Another stupid, thoughtless signing from a manager whose lost the plot.

But he was filthy cheap for the amount of quality we got. I think you will find that Wenger will only use him as a striker in the first team unless he needs Park to play elsewhere, and it doesn't look like there will be such a need. I think this was a great signing, and when he is fit, he may be our reserve striker, or we may even see him utilised in a changed formation.

I personally wouldn't be surprised to see us change back to the good old 4-4-2. But I'm not too confident ;)

I think we REALLY NEED to start playing Park and Ox in the first team ASAP if we are to start getting back to the top of the prem table.

Wow JG, I've been asking this question for the longest, "where the hell is Park?" We bought the guy under a team that obviously wanted him, and stepped on some toes in the process of doing so, so why isn' he being used? When i asked the question a few weeks ago, I got some responses from people here who said he had to be properly incorporated into the team. Bullshit. What better way to incorporate someone than give em the opportunity to play? Furthermore, the guy can't stop scoring for Korea. It may not be top class competition, but he seems to be at his peak as you said JG. Arsenal is so confusing, we seem to go against everything that make sense. I read where Pepe Reina said Arsenal wanted to spend 20mil for him. That woulda been crazy, plenty of other quality keepers out there way below that 20mil figure. I'm glad Liverpool blocked that transaction. Instead of buying 2 quality defenders to protect the keeper for 20mil, we wanna spend it on a decent goalie. January is a few months away, lets see what other fiasco will develop.  

It's just another completely out of touch decision from AW. It says nothing for his purchase of this player who cannot even push out the worst bunch of first team players i personnally can ever remember in fifty years following Arsenal. If he is worse than Rosicky, Song, Schillaci and Walcott and Chamakh and the rest well he has made a huge error. These players give absolutely nothing in terms of reliability and i can't wait any longer to see AW go, hopefully to a position in EUFA because every single thing he is doing is taking us further away and he's becoming a laughing stock. I really regret having to say this but it is what i honestly believe. colinc

Are you watching the same team I am? I disagree with almost everything you have said. Song has been excellent and is very reliable as a defensive midfielder and also covered our arse in as a centre back. Did you not see him there? 

I agree with you and Martin, but I think Colinc is right that Chamakh, Squizz, Rosicky, and even Theo (at times), while showing sporadic brilliance (sans Squizz), offer little reliability.

I will agree with Squizz, no one will be happier than me if he gets the boot, however for the others are we really expecting much from Rosicky and how can we expect reliability from a team that can't keep the same 11 players on the pitch for two games in a row? We've went through more changes than Katie price has went through c**K.

Really? Song and Walcott offer nothing? Not sure how anyone who watches Arsenal week in, week out for the last couple of seasons could honestly think that.

 typical aw, couldn't understand. Last time we have under perform player such as denilson and diaby, but he play them again and again. Bendtner have been deploy on the wing eventhough we have watch that he is not a winger. We have vela with a lot of potential but we haven't seem him a lot in 1st 11. I'm also affraid thing would happen to ryo, why keep the player if he knows he wouldn't use it..weird wenger. GOD PHW...

i totally agree. whats the point of signing a good player like him if he isn't going to played? AW has got to change his mindset and tactics asap or we will not make top 4 this time around!

I think i'd leave it to the coach, who's trusted and employed by the club, to make that call. The coach watches and trains him almost everyday and will know when he's ready. 

Park is new to the EPL, and sometimes players take time to settle...I remember it took a while for PJS to adapt and the other Korean at Bolton.

The one great quality of AW is that he'll give players a chance to impress, Park will get his chance and he better grab it.

Maybe I'm the only one, but I think Gervinho and Theo have been okay -- certainly not so poor that I'd bench them in an important match to play Park out of position.

Park will get plenty of chances -- he'll start all the domestic cup matches, and RvP has never made it through an entire season healthy, so I have little doubt Park will get called into action then.

As a unit they're not bad. In fact, Theo's got a bunch of assists this term. But their finishing has been very poor. For a player who used to play as a striker, and for another who has been calling for Arsene to play him up front for a couple of years now, their goal return should be much higher. Which is why AOC or Park should be given a chance. We can't be doing much worse, can we?

we are working with a really small sample size here.  Both players have been up and down so far this season but show plenty of promise and areas of concern.

Promise is that Gervinho looks like he can create and take on players 1 v 1.  He is smart with the timing of his runs and gets into dangerous positions.  Concerning is his decision making and finishing ability.

Walcott is a good crosser, plenty of pace, clinical finisher, but shows no ability or quality to be involved in the build up play in the middle of the pitch and can disappear from games.  

The two of them playing together should allow RVP to drop deeper and pick up their runs from the flanks.  They don't seem to offer the passing and vision of Nasri or Arshavin in the same positions, so I think Arsenal will sit a little deeper in the midfield when they play and look to dominate possession a bit less. 

Lets hope that they can both round in to better form.