You know what? Losing is completely awful, it’s terrible, minging and shit.
However, sometimes you have to hold your hands up when the other team merits their victory and there’s no doubt in my mind that Boro deserved it yesterday. We were as threatening as an 89 year old woman with a kidney infection who is also blind and has no limbs having had them all lopped off years previously because of a diabetic infection of some kind.
We didn’t make it easy for ourselves at all when we gave them a penalty after just 4 minutes. Kolo made a tackle that didn’t need to be made and Jeremie Aliadiere, of all people, went down in the box and Downing scored from the spot. It was a crap penalty to give away and as much as I love Kolo, and I do love Kolo, his long balls and overall performance would have people vomiting blood out of their noses if it had been Philippe Senderos.
We brought on Bendtner for Eduardo at half-time and then Walcott and Denilson for Eboue and Diarra but it made no difference. Without Hleb, Cesc, Flamini and van Persie we were completely toothless from midfield to the strikers. They got their second with about 10 minutes to go when Tuncay put home the rebound after Almunia made a good save from some cunt or other. After that there was no possible way back and you have to say that Boro fully deserved the win. We hardly had a shot, let alone a shot on target, and too many of our players were off colour.
Gilberto and Diarra are too similar in the centre and are not even close to replacing the dynamism and creativity of Cesc and Flamini. Eduardo struggled again but I think it’s only fair to question why he was shunted out left again leaving Adebayor on his own up top. In the absence of all the others we needed something from Rosicky, the most creative of the midfielders, but again he disappointed and his late goal is typical of the kind of goal he scores – they are rarely important, most often coming to secure a result rather than being the vital goal.
The talk this morning will be of the unbeaten record going but perhaps that’s not a bad thing. I mean the unbeaten record going, not the talk. A league defeat had to happen at some point and realistically anybody expecting us to repeat what was a unique achievement a couple of years ago is living in the land of dreamy dreams. What we need to do is look at it positively.
We’re going through a bit of a sticky spell at the moment but we’re lucky in the sense that this bad patch does not mean we’re falling behind the leaders, only that our lead is being cut. We’re still top of the league, still a point ahead of United and if you’d offered people that at the start of the season they’d have bitten your hands off. So let’s not get too downhearted and lose the run of ourselves in the wake of this bad result. Of course some other bloggers will scweam and scweam and scweam because they can’t understand that Arsenal don’t have a divine right to win every game but you should ignore them because they are just shrill cunts.
Leaving aside the Steaua Bucharest game, which might be a good way of getting ourselves back on track, it’s Chelsea next Sunday and we really do have to dust ourselves down and get some momentum going for that one. We really have to hope that we’ll have at least a couple of Hleb, Cesc, Flamini and van Persie back because we’re really missing them now. If all of them were back then that’d be even better.
Afterwards Arsene wasn’t pulling any punches about the performance, saying:
We lost because we deserved to lose. We lacked creativity and sharpness in our passing, and we were not dangerous enough to come back into the game.
Is defeat acceptable? No. Never. But, acceptable or not, you have to take it. It is more acceptable when you think your opponents deserved to win.
And he’s right but there’s no point dwelling on it. It was as poor a performance as we’ve seen in a long time but that happens in football. United lost to a crap Bolton side this season, Liverpool lost against Reading just the other day and now we’ve lost against a Boro side that on paper we should beat. Football is played on grass though, not paper. How fucking profound is that, eh?
Like I say though, we should stay positive and now we’ll see what this team and its captain are really made of. Our backs are to the wall somewhat and it’s a real test of character with the Chelsea game coming up on Sunday.
Right then, once again it’s time for some painkillers, another bit of sleep perhaps then out into the sunshine. It’s fantastically warm here.
Laters all, till tomorrow.
