Sunderland 1-2 Arsenal: God Does His Thing

Sometimes, too often, there are weekends where everything goes wrong in football. Arsenal lose, all of our competitors and close challengers win, Stoke and Blackburn, Bolton and Wolves, all of the teams you love to hate somehow to conspire to do wonderfully. These, in turn, are balanced out by those wonderful weekends where pretty much everything falls your way.

This was one of those. Clearly, 3 points for us were super-vital. More on the gaining of those points in a minute. We also saw Liverpool, Newcastle and Chelsea lose. Unfortunately, the Newcastle result came at the hands of an astonishingly effective Totnum performance, but I suppose if we're being ultra-realistic, we have to accept (gulp) that that bunch will be finishing above us and that we will be fighting for the fourth place with the three other teams mentioned above. From that perspective, the Spuds did us a favour, even if it did stick in your throat slightly to see Redknapp celebrating so irritatingly 5 times. He reminded me of a dog that can't quite believe it's being allowed to go for a walk.

I must confess to not seeing our match in its entirety, and thus I can't comment overly on our performance. I watched one of those half-hour highlight packages afterwards, but you all know what happened so I won't detail that. One thing that won't have been discussed much is Aaron Ramsey. I know he has been criticised a bit lately, which hasn't been entirely unwarranted. I was very glad he got a goal, and so soon after coming on. Despite his less brilliant (though still not by any means terrible) performances since the new year, I remain convinced that he is going to be a major component of Arsenal's midfield for a while to come, and it was good to see him celebrating a goal. Henry, rightfully, grabbed most of the attention. What can a mere blogger say about him that hasn't been said a thousand times already. The man was simply born to be part of the history of our football club. I have loved watching him celebrate his three goals almost more than score them- he celebrates like a fan. That goal was so important to the club, to the fans, and to the man himself. It's odd, as well, that he would score an injury-time winner when notable football sage and all round prediction guru Mark Lawrenson would have bet against him scoring in the league at all. (Disclaimer: alarming smile in link, open with caution). Don't worry though, your license fee pennies were better spent this week, when Guru Lawrenson out-predicted the Muppets.

Sentiments aside, it goes without saying that those three points were absolutely enormous on a day when all of the teams around us dropped points. Not only do we gain three points on Liverpool, Chelsk and Newcastle, we leapfrogged Chelsea into fourth place. What is it about football that means you are constantly 'leapfrogging' teams. In what other circumstances is that word used? We overtook them. Whatever we did, we are now in fourth place. I remember solemnly predicting a few weeks back tbat we were out of the race for fourth. More proof, were it needed, that what you are reading are the semi-formed ramblings of a Mark Lawrenson-level bullshitter. What I had forgotten was how crazily quickly things can change in this game. Chelsea are on a run of form that make our recent run of form look like a slightly less bad run of form. Their 10-match record looks like: DDDLWWDDDL. Yikes. I suspect that that run can't go on forever, they will no doubt find their feet soon. Which is why taking full advantage like we did over Sunderland is so important. There is now very much a four way race for that one spot, and although we have crept ahead, there is still a third of the season to go. I'm not sure if we're favourites for fourth, but we have shown resolve and tenacity (as well as luck that our run of awful form coincided with Chelsea's) in the last two weeks to claw our way back to the very minimum level that should be expected of us. Fingers crossed we are gathering the necessary momentum.


In a weekend dominated by off-the-pitch matters, we did our job, and that's all I'm really interested in. That Thierry Henry was the one to finish the job off made it that much sweeter. This was one of those weekends when everything goes your way (even Stoke lost!) so let's enjoy that while we can. Coming up is the small matter of a midweek game against the Italian league leaders. I'm going, so will write on my return. Let's hope it's a good one, but for today and tomorrow, let's just enjoy our leapfrogging.


Until next time,
Joe


Follow me on Twitter @joeblogsarsenal

Arsenal 7-1 Blackburn

First thought: phew. It goes without saying that we needed a win
yesterday. It wasn't obvious that we would get it, and I certainly
didn't predict that we would get it with such ease. Before I describe
the performance and the impact one might hope it has on morale for
games to come, I need to add the caveat that Blackburn were truly
awful. Watching them yesterday, it was very much clear why they are 19th in the league. Add to that the fact that they played with 10
men for most of the game after Gael Givet was rightly sent off, and
we'd be wrong to take too much from the thrashing we delivered.

Having said that, let's not be too hard on ourselves. This is the
Blackburn team that beat United a couple of weeks ago. Scoring 7
against any Premier League side is a feat. Gael Givet was sent off
after we had quite clinically 'won' the game in the first half. They
were terrible, but we made them look worse.

I was so pleased with the impact of Walcott and AOC. They were very
effective, and when you have wingers (or wide forwards, as neither was
really playing on the wing) that are getting behind the
defence so effectively, you're going to create chances. And when you have a striker
of the calibre of Robin van Persie in the box, chances are you're
going to score from some of those chances. People might look at van
Persie's goals yesterday and think they were all relatively
straight-forward. And in terms of the actual finishing, they were. But
watch the replays and focus on the man's movement in the build up to
each. He's like a ghost. Defenders know that they are playing against
the most in-form striker in the world, but they can't defend against
him because his movement makes that impossible. He is phenomenal to
watch. 3 goals and 2 assists yesterday, one of which was a visionary
through ball to the Ox. If you didn't know before, let me tell you:
this is one of the best footballers ever to play for Arsenal. Bold
words, I know. Let me put it another way: he has now scored more goals for Arsenal than Dennis Bergkamp. That says it all. Obviously, one of our main priorities now has to be
keeping him. He deserves to have a team built around him.

Others impressed. Rosicky started and looked really good, as he has
done recently. Koscielny is a very solid defender. More ammo against
the mugs who argue that Wenger inherited a defence and can't spot
defensive talent. For every Cygan, there's a Koscielny. I'm a big fan
of the Kos.

So what does this comprehensive victory mean? Certainly not that we've
turned a corner. We may have, that remains to be seen. Maybe we never
had a corner to turn, perhaps we were just on a straight road but had
foolishly gone into a Little Chef and eaten an omelette which had
turned out to be made with 6-week old eggs, got salmonella, and had to
spend a month recovering. Or something. One of the best ways to get
out of a deep rut is to spank a load of useless-ex-allardyce-long-

ball-hoof-merchant-relegation-fodder clowns 7-1, so let's hope it was the tonic that allows us to improve our form
to the extent that we can at least start to idly dream about not
playing in the Europa League next year.

As I write, I have recently returned from watching United do us a
massive favour against Chelsea. Of course, if they really wanted to do
us a favour, they could have not beaten us 8-2 in August, but I
suppose it's the thought that counts. I know I have written off our
chances of coming fourth, and I stand by that, but what is the point
of being a football fan if you can't cling to the straggliest of
straws? There's still a mathematical chance, and Chelsea showed off
some more of their deep-rooted flaws tonight. 3-0 up to United, they
were pulled back by 2 Wayne Rooney penalties and a Chicharito header.
One thing you could say is that that would never have happened under
Mourinho. Chelsea are certainly not the force they were, and watching
them objectively (something I struggle with, admittedly), they do not
necessarily look stronger than Arsenal. There's still hope, even if
your heart tells you that fourth is out of our reach.

Overall, I'm happy with the weekend. Newcastle won, of course but if
you see Chelsea as our main competitors for fourth place, this was yet
another opportunity to make up points on them, and an opportunity we
took. We scored 7 goals, RvP got a hatrick, Thierry scored in his last game at the Emirates, and Stoke lost. Call me a
man of simple pleasures, but that for me is a great weekend of
football.

Until next time,

Joe

Arsenal 0-0 Bolton: Let’s Play the Blame Game

How to describe the fortunes of Arsenal at the moment? Malaise? Torpor? Stuck in a rut? Simply not good enough? Last night has left me totally disheartened. No 4^th place for us, I’d put money on it. This team doesn’t seem to have the wherewithal to fight for 4^th place. Currently, we’re outside of the f*cking Europa League positions. Talk about dire.

Who can we blame? The manager, to an extent. No (proper) signings in January probably didn’t surprise many people, but it infuriated plenty. Having been a Wengerphile for so long I don’t know if I now deflect blame from him automatically without being objective enough. But look, we had the same players that we had when we went on that decent winning run that seems so long ago now. This horrendous run of form, then, can’t be down to a lack of signings. Can we blame injuries? There were plenty in January (this is Arsenal), and they played their part, but those were mainly in defence. I think the problems lie further forward; defence certainly wasn’t the issue last night. What else? Luck? Certainly, it’s played a part. On another night we would have been 3-0 up at half time. Having said that, Bolton missed a fair few chances of their own. Not luck then. Psychological issues? It’s well known that confidence takes a long time to build up, and not long to shatter. Maybe, but where was the broken confidence in the second half of the Aston Villa game in the FA Cup? Those were the same players. Is this a strictly league-bound problem?

Many question marks, as you can see, and very few answers. I suspect the answer is a bit from each pile. All the ingredients, combined, make one revolting pie of shit form, topped with a lumpy gravy of sliding league position and served with a salad garnish of fan disenchantment. For desert: Andrei Arshavin’s career.

What makes this even worse, for me, is that there are only three teams in the league who are definitively better than us. Chelsea are stumbling through the season like Boris Johnson stumbles into tackles. Liverpool and Newcastle are ahead of us not really on their own merit, but because of our failings. Don’t get me wrong, they deserve to be ahead of us, but only because their form has been marginally less awful than ours. In our last four games, had we taken the nine points we could reasonably have expected, instead of one, we’d be three points behind Tottenham. I know, it’s like saying if Owen Coyle had fewer teeth, he wouldn’t look so much like a dolphin- he doesn’t, so he does.

 But don’t be mistaken that Spurs are a wonderful team and have been in such good form that they’re uncatchable. Had we taken the points we ‘should’ have over the last month, we’d be right behind them, and well clear of the dross of Liverpool and Newcastle. Fourth is up for the taking, but we’re not up for taking it.

I am not one of the fans calling for Wenger’s head. Not because of what he has done for the club, not because he is a wonderful manager going through a very tough season (all true), but because fans calling for the removal of a manager because of a poor run of form is the reserve of bottom-of-the-table dross, and clubs run by amoral Russian billionaires. I still possess, deep down, that glimmer of hope that this season will be just a blip, and that soon Arsenal will be back where they belong. I suppose that’s what keeps any fan sane.

At the moment, however, that blip is a needle hidden in a haystack. A tiny needle, and a huge haystack. I won’t even begin to consider Saturday’s game. I don’t want to give myself false hope, I truly no longer believe that we can or will finish fourth. The best I’m hoping for now is a run in either cup and some serious discussion among the leadership about how to turn this club around. Otherwise we could be looking at a couple of years in the wilderness, at least.

Pessimistically yours,

Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JoeBlogsArsenal