May 25th
Ok, as promised here’s my season review. It just looks at the good things, the not so good things, and some other crap too. I’ve tried to cover all the main talking points but seeing as my brain is not so slowly turning to mush I’m sure there’s stuff I’ve forgotten. There’s little or no news anyway this morning so this should fill the gap. So without further ado:
THE GOOD
The young players – I suppose the most obvious positive this season, apart from winning the FA Cup, was the emergence of the young players.
Some might say that Cesc Fabregas only got a run in the team because of injuries, and that’s probably true to an extent, but he took his chance when it arrived and became a fixture in the side for the rest of the season. He’s an incredibly talented player and his passing, at such a young age, is unbelievable at times. The same with Philippe Senderos – he’d long been lauded as the next Tony Adams but he missed his entire first season with a serious injury but when his time came he kept Sol Campbell out of the team, something people would have thought impossible.
He looks like the centre-half we’ve been looking for since Adams left and Keown’s decline and departure. After seeing him in just a dozen or so games Real Madrid want him but he’s ours and he’s going to be a legend.
Robin van Persie took a little bit of time to get into the swing of things but he’s now beginning to look like the real thing. Mathieu Flamini showed that he’s capable of holding his own as well and his energy will be important next season. Add to them the already established Gael Clichy, David Bentley coming back from Norwich and the other supporting cast members who did so well in the Carling Cup (Quincy, Djourou etc) and there’s a solid base of very good young players who will have gained a lot from this season and will be better next time around.
The football – The way we’ve played in some games has been just awesome. The pace, style and flourish we’ve been lucky to see shouldn’t be forgotten just because we didn’t win the league. A common soundbite regarding Arsenal is that we always try to score ‘the perfect goal’. But you know what? Quite often we do. Intricate one-touch passing, clever tricks and cool finishes. It’s been fabulous to watch. No game more so that the 5-3 against Boro – probably the most enjoyable Arsenal game of the season for me. 1-0 up, 3-1, 5-3 up. Amazing. Although coming a close second was the North London derby at White Hart Lane and mad Spurs bloke in front of us in the pub.
The record – It’s been overlooked a bit but until the game at Old Trafford we hadn’t been beaten for 49 Premiership games. Yes, that defeat knocked the stuffing out of us but people shouldn’t forget what a magnificent achievement that was and it’s worth congratulating the players and manager for it again.
The goals – Some crackers to remember this season. Vieira v Everton – the way you imagine an Arsenal goal from this team to be. Great build-up, stylish finish. Reyes v Boro, Henry’s backheel against Charlton, his goals against Palace at home, van Persie against Southampton in the last minute and his two against Blackburn, Sol against Portsmouth, Bob’s free kick against Liverpool, Cesc becoming our youngest scorer in Europe with a great goal against Roseborg, the list goes on…
THE NOT SO GOOD
Ashley Cole – we’ll get the findings of the commission on June 1st but the facts are that one of our players went to meet the manager and chairman of our main title rivals to discuss a transfer. He did it just days before we played Manchester United in the league. They all got caught red handed.
I’ve written a lot about this and I believe Cole’s agent to be the driving force behind it all. We hear stories about how Arsenal and Barnett had agreed a deal in principal only for Arsenal to suddenly subtract £5,000 from the initial offer. Rubbish. Cole’s new contract would have more than doubled his £27,000 a week wages and last week Peter Hill-Wood confirmed that Cole wanted his current deal tripled. It’s a nonsense to think Arsenal would act this way over a player who grew up an Arsenal fan, who is one of the only English players in the team, who is a product of the youth system and who is, on his day, probably the best left back in the world.
I believe Barnett thought about Chelsea, saw pound signs and was the one who set up the meeting. The commission will clarify that.
I’ve already expressed in previous posts my disdain for this restriction of trade defence that Cole and Barnett played. What is inescapable though is that Cole still went to the meeting. He was prepared, mid-season and just days before an important game, to go and meet another club. Not to talk about his pop star girlfriend or fast cars or the weather. There’s only one reason he went to that meeting and it was to talk about a transfer and how much money Chelsea would pay him. Out of order and he’s stained his reputation with a lot of Arsenal fans.
You have to ask – when does £60,000 a week, and that is what he was offered, become not enough to sign for the club you supposedly love? When you can get £100,000+ at Chelsea and your agent is thinking about the increase in his wages when you increase yours, I suppose. I think he has to sign a new deal this summer or we have to sell him. Based on some recent information I think he will sign a new deal, hopefully he’ll have learned a valuable lesson and we can all move on. A final question that occurs is did Cole think his behaviour was nothing for people to get too stressed about based on what he’s seen his captain do more than once?
Europe – Again we ‘fail’ in Europe but we went through the group stage unbeaten, people seem to forget that. It was two decidedly uncharacteristic mistakes from Kolo Toure in Munich which cost us the tie against Bayern and the 1-0 win at home was not enough. Some people have the Champions League as this kind of Holy Grail that we have to win to be a great team. I don’t subscribe to that at all and Arsenal’s so-called failure in Europe is a self-perpetuating myth really. I accept we haven’t done as well as we might have but that doesn’t make us a bad team or a team not worthy of greatness. Last season’s unbeaten run was far more of an achievement than winning the CL, in my opinion.
This season we went out at the same time as Real Madrid, Manchester United and Barcelona while supposedly lesser teams like Liverpool and PSV went much further. All the Champions League is now is a European FA Cup. Any team can win it because it’s knock-out football. It’s not a measure of the who’s the best team in Europe anymore. It’s no longer a tournament for champions, it’s an overblown TV extravaganza, which while I’d like to see us win it some day, is not something I can bring myself to get overly disappointed about when we lose.
I’d also like to see us do better next season so some people might just shut the fuck up about it.
The kit – Back in March 2004, before we won the league, I said this: “If we manage to win the league this season, you can put money on us losing it against next season if we’re playing in a blue kit.”
One of the reasons we didn’t retain the league was because we were wearing a blue kit. Some of you might think that’s rubbish, I happen to believe it’s a factor. Can we please never, ever have a blue away kit again? Thanks. Next season’s poxy tribute kit is a load of shite as well but at least it’s not blue.
THE PLAYERS
José Antonio Reyes – A difficult one this. When he’s good he’s really, really good but when he’s bad he’s anonymous. He started the season so well and just couldn’t stop scoring. Then it began to get cold and his form went out the window. We had the radio hoax, the stories in Marca, the Aragones incident and the player himself has struggled to adapt to life in England. His troubled personal life last season was certainly a factor in his performances. Towards the end of the season he picked himself again and started scoring but what we need more than anything is consistency from him.
He’s obviously a very talented player but we certainly haven’t seen the best of him. I believe he’ll be with us next season but he’s got to repay the faith shown in him by the manager, his team-mates and the fans with a more concentrated campaign next time around.
Goalkeeper – This position became a bit of a bug-bear during the season.
Jens made a couple of errors, like any goalkeeper (and I happen to think his mistakes have been blown out of proportion and he’s a better keeper than he’s given credit for), and Arsene brought in Manuel Almunia who was, by all accounts, sensational in training almost every single day.
Unfortunately his training form didn’t carry over to the big match occasion and he looked all at sea culminating in a poor performance against Manchester United. The rest seemed to do Jens good and since he’s been back in the side his form has been outstanding. He’s made saves, he’s looked much more solid and both he and Manuel have been heroes in FA Cup penalty shoot-outs this season. There are still doubts over his temperament though and there will no doubt be massive speculation linking us with all kinds of keepers this summer.
The problem is finding somebody though. Everyone says we need a ‘world class’ young keeper like Petr Cech but I don’t see too many of them around, do you? If there is an obvious candidate, somebody who is available and who will improve the squad then I think we’ll buy a keeper.
If not then there’s no point buying a keeper for the sake of it and people shouldn’t be too disheartened if we start next season with Jens in goal. If he plays as well as he’s been playing since his return to the side then nobody can have any complaints. What is hard though is people expecting the ‘perfect’ keeper, one who won’t make mistakes, because that keeper does not exist. Lots of names have been bandied about already. Timo Hildebrand from Stuttgart, Andreas Isaakson from Rennes, Carlos Kameni from Espanyol. No doubt there’ll be more, like Abiatti, Frey, Given and there’s some talk of a young Spanish keeper to come in but I don’t know much more than that.
Bergkamp – I thought this would be his last season but he’s got another one. That doesn’t mean, as some people think, that we won’t sign a striker this summer. I believe that’s one area that we’ll definitely bring somebody in but Arsene Wenger obviously feels Dennis has something to contribute next season. He certainly won’t have made a decision based on sentimentality or simply because it’s Dennis. How long he’ll have an impact next season is anybody’s guess. He might go the way of Zola and fade after Christmas or he might be part and parcel of things when we win everything next May. He’ll get a testimonial at the end of the season and who’s to say he doesn’t deserve it?
Thierry – for getting within 4 goals of WWW’s record he deserves a mention. For his amazing consistency and goalscoring he deserves a mention. He also deserves a mention because we showed we can win without him and the people who call us a one-man team couldn’t be more wrong.
Highlights: Cesc, Senderos, FA Cup win for us, FA Cup heartbreak for United, Rio’s tears, Highbury in January, meeting lots of Arsebloggers. You people are all right, so you are.
Lowlights: Manchester United at Old Trafford and Higbury, the blip after we lost the record, the people who expect us to win every game and bleat about sacking the manager when we struggle for a bit instead of supporting the team.
Summary: Obviously any season when you don’t win the league is a bit disappointing but when you look at our points total and the number of goals we scored there’s no need for the doom and gloom that emanates from certain fans. We’ve regained a solidity in defence that we needed, we’ve got great young talent coming through and we’ve won a trophy. Not a bad season by any other standards but when you go through a season unbeaten it’s always going to be very hard to match it. To me the future is bright.
I’m happy with what we’ve done this season, I have to say. Some of you know, and others not, that I lost somebody very close to me this season and it might sound like a cliché but it does put things in perspective. Football is a game. A great game and one we all love, one we’re passionate about, but it’s not more important than a matter of life and death, Mr Shankley, it’s just not. Enjoy this team we’ve got at the moment, they’re fucking brilliant and we might not see their like again in the future.
Now, let the transfer speculation begin like a fox. It’s all I’ve got to write about for the next two months.
