Bleurgh, still sick. Colds are rubbish.
Chelsea today, as we all know, and we go into the game knowing we need a result. Not to get us back into the title race, not to keep in touch, so much as to instill some belief in this squad. But belief only goes so far. I’m sure they had belief after beating Man United and look where that ended up.
Manuel Almunia has described the last couple of weeks as a ‘nightmare‘ and it’s hard to disagree with that. Despite the win againt Kiev in midweek the keeper reckons today is the test, today is when we see if anything has changed within the squad. He says:
Dynamo Kiev is not Chelsea. We will see against Chelsea whether this team knows how to react or not. We are in the same place as before this game. The victory is giving us confidence but not changing the situation. We know our situation in the League and we have to react. A win at Chelsea would be a first step.
He’s bang on. It would be just the first step. It would be a good sign but no real evidence that we’ve changed our attitude or ability to perform like heroes one day and utter chumps the next.
Today’s papers are annoying. You have Joe Cole having a little dig at us saying that it’s all well and good playing pretty football but at the end of the day it’s trophies that matter. It’s annoying because he’s right. He might be a dribbling, window-licking cunt but he’s got a point. The kind of point you’d like to smash right down his throat with a piece of silverware.
Then there’s an incredible piece of David Dein propaganda in the News of the World which tries to suggest that all our woes in recent times are due to his departure. Of course that’s utter nonsense but when times are trying people are more inclined to believe stuff like this. It’s easier to blame the sacking of a board member who behaved atrociously than point the finger at Arsene who, whether Dein is there or not, makes ALL the decisions about football at the club.
The manager himself talks about how the club is in a good position to face the ongoing financial woes that face the world, something that football has been seemingly immune from for years. Clubs have operated as if there’s a golden cash cow that will always bail them out, they can operate at huge losses, spending far more than they earn, but use the TV money and prize money to keep them afloat and service their debts. Wenger says:
People don’t yet realise what will hit society in the next 12 months. Arsenal made £30m profit last year. I am quite proud of that because no matter what happens, this club cannot die. It is in a strong financial position.
Which is fantastic and I think everyone is happy to read things like that. He goes on to say:
To win, some people are ready to make the club explode and say, ‘Okay, you buy, spend £50m, £60m’. Nobody cares. But if you are in a financially unstable position, you are in a weak position. We have two important strengths: a very young and promising team, and a football club in the 21st century with a new stadium and training ground that also has a strong financial situation.
And again it all makes good sense but the problem is that it’s very difficult for football fans to see the long term picture because, for the most part, we’re more interested in the ‘now’. By our very nature we see things in the short term. Who we’re playing next, where we are in the league, do we have a chance of winning a trophy this season?
Now, nobody wants Arsene to bankrupt the club. Nobody wants him to spend more than we have. I think all any of us want is that he spends what is available to him and despite our young team with potential we still have the second highest wage bill in the league. One of the things the board always said was that there was no point having a great new stadium unless we had a team that was good enough to win things, that the stadium would not affect the quality of the team.
I think we can see that it has and that’s down to Arsene. He made a decision to build a squad, a young squad, and hoped he would be able to keep them together to win things. But when he nearly did it last season he lost experience and quality and didn’t replace it. All this talk comes in a week when the club have made it clear, as they have consistently done, that there is money for the manager to spend. There’s just over a month until he can spend it and while spending it may weaken our financial position it will strengthen our football position. The balance has to be right. The aim of a football club should not be to first make a profit, it should be to win trophies.
Anyway, that’s all stuff we’ve been through before. Back to today and as I said in previous blogs it’s going to be very, very tough. Chelsea are formidable at home, even if they’re not quite purring like they were a few weeks ago. They hate us, we hate them, it’s going to be a battle.
Here’s hoping the new captain can create the kind of mentality we need for a game like this. You know, what’s really annoying at the moment is that there are so many people taking pleasure in our situation at the moment. I can see where we have problems and I’ll talk about them here with other Arsenal fans, but when I read and see some of the pundits and columnists and fans of other clubs viewing our woes with such glee it really fucking gets on my tits. We have the right to talk about Arsenal, they don’t.
Not just because many of them are identifying the same issues with the team that we are but because they’re loving it. It’s why so many of us reacted so badly to what Gallas said. It’s why I take with disdain stuff planted in the press by bitter ex-directors looking to stick the knife in during hard times because they’re bitter about how they got kicked out of the club they purport to love so much.
It’s backs against the wall stuff, isn’t it? I don’t quite know where I’m going with this, to be honest, all I know is that I want Arsenal to win today. I want a performance, I don’t want bragging rights, I don’t want to gloat, I just want this Arsenal team to show they’re an Arsenal team. That when we’re in the shit they’ll fight right until the last whistle to get a result that will go some way to making things better.
I may have gotten out of the wrong side of bed this morning, you know, and I think I might be hallucinating slightly. I need morphine, that will cure my cold you know. Instead the dirty cartel of Beechams and Lemsip prevent me from getting my hands on over the counter morphine, the cunts.
But while they might be cunts they’re not quite as cunty as Chelsea. Come on Arsenal, do us proud today.
