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
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