When you step back and look at it a point against a very good, very resilient Everton side, at Goodison Park, is not the worst result in the world.
However, when you step back into it again you land right foot first in the steaming dogshit that was our performance last night. Yes, I was elated when Robin van Persie provided our only moment of quality in the game to equalise in injury time, but anyone who watched that and wasn’t hugely concerned about this team was looking at a different game than I was.
Let’s make no bones about this – last night’s game was as important a game as we’ve had this season. Villa had won on Tuesday night so it was crucial we matched them. And in big, important games this season we have responded and pulled a good result out of the hat.
The win against United came on the back of that horrendous Sp*rs game and an away defeat to Stoke. The Chelsea win came after successive defeats to Aston Villa and Man City. Both times the team rose to the occasion and put in performances which got us results which were absolutely vital. The Everton game may not have come on the back of such poor results but it was just as important. The way we played you wouldn’t have thought so.
A couple of Denilson shots aside we created virtually nothing. Emmanuel Adebayor won over many Arsenal fans with his goals but many more through his enthusiasm and willingness to work hard on the pitch. That work ethic has gone, diluted by his enormous pay packet, and last night’s performance was pretty hard to stomach. He can do much, much better than that but it’s almost like it’s beneath him now.
That said, the strikers got little or no service from the midfield, and it’s hard for a midfield to be confident and creative when they know they’ve got a defence behind them that can concede at any time. Everton’s goal was inevitable. Tim Cahill, who even Stevie Wonder can see is the dangerman, was left alone by the two centre-halves and he easily beat Gael Clichy to head home the goal. Look at the replays though, the amount of time the Everton player had to cross the ball was just ludicrous. Poor defending all round.
I have to say I really didn’t think we were going to score. I know we’ve got a habit of late goals, and credit where it’s due for that, but we find ourselves too often in a position where a late goal is an absolute necessity and not simply the icing on the cake.
Without the contribution of van Persie in the last couple of months I shudder to think where we’d be. He’s carrying the team and his goal was top class. Diaby had to get something right, the law of averages dictated that, and his diagonal ball was chested down and slammed past Howard to salvage a point I’m really not sure we deserved. I’ll take it, of course, but that game was hard going and once again exposed all the problems of this team.
Problems I, and countless other Arsenal fans, have been going on about for quite some time. We don’t defend well enough, we have a big need for a centre-half and there’s a serious lack of quality in midfield.
Without Cesc we have no creative spark, the midfield is just collectively poor. Song did reasonably well last night but is still nowhere near good enough, in my opinion, Diaby can’t dictate a game, Denilson is no right winger and Nasri is still finding his feet away from home. As a team we passed the ball poorly, even simple 10 yard balls were going straight to Everton players.
Would Arshavin make a difference? Probably, he’s a good player, a better option than any else for the right hand side at this moment in time, but you just wonder if we’re going to spend £15m in the transfer window (if we do splash out, of course), that we might be able to spend it better. At this moment in time Arshavin feels like putting brand new leather seats into a 1979 Skoda.
Afterwards Arsene was full of the usual stuff about spirit and character, which is his stock response to games like this. I don’t really pay it any heed because we’ve been hearing it for the last 12 years. I don’t know why anybody expects any different. But when asked about if the arrival of Arshavin was imminent, he said:
No not at the moment. We have a good squad, we have many players as well out injured and they will all come back. We hope that Walcott, Fabregas and Rosicky will come back to the squad very soon and that is for us like buying players.
Now that’s annoying. Cesc isn’t due back until April, Rosicky we hear might be 8 weeks – if he ‘survives’ more physical training – and Theo will be back soonest but to pin our hopes on an exciting, but still raw, 19 year old is madness. Those players are not like buying players, they’re like getting injured players back. Nothing more. You can’t expect players who were part of a struggling team to come back from injury and make the difference as if they weren’t part of things to begin with. It’s almost insulting.
That said, I’ve heard and read a lot of things said about the manager in the last few hours, and it strikes me that some of our fans have little respect for him and what he’s done for the club. To me that’s sad, that they can be so vitriolic and angry towards him after everything that he’s done for Arsenal. I can completely understand people being frustrated with him, I am myself, but I have to say it makes me feel funny just how much some fans have turned against him.
I’m not going to pretend I don’t have issues with him, I think he’s got things wrong this season in a way he’s never done before. He didn’t strengthen properly in the summer, and when the evidence of that decision has been clear as day to everyone, he hasn’t done enough to address it in the January window. I thought we needed a good central midfielder before Cesc got injured, we certainly needed one when he did, but we’ve taken the easy option to rely on players who have done nothing to suggest they’re good enough at this moment in time.
We’ve needed a centre-half for a long time, according to Alex Fynn on the Arsecast a couple of weeks ago that was something he made clear last summer, yet we haven’t brought anyone in. And maybe it’s just me but I refuse to accept that Arsene, with all his famed scouts and knowledge, couldn’t find the right players at the right price. I think he took a gamble, hoping some players would come good, but the gamble has backfired and that’s evident in our league position. A spur of the moment signing like Silvestre summed it up – no real plan, hope things work out and you get Flamini-esque improvement from a couple of players.
However, I do find it hard to take when people are so vehemently against him these days. I think he’s made mistakes, and I really struggle to see the sense of many of his recent decisions, but to pour such spite and bile on him, even though it might only be on internet forums and comment boxes, is wrong. By all means criticise, he’s left himself open to it, but have a bit of decency and respect for what the man has done for this football club.
But that’s not to take away from the paucity of quality we possess at the moment. We hardly made a chance all night against Everton, we struggled against Cardiff on Sunday, and on Saturday we play a West Ham side full of confidence. Yet, yet, yet, we’re unbeaten in our last 9 games, unbeaten in the same amount of league games, and that’s a reasonable stat. It makes my head hurt, kind of.
The fact is we have a real fight on our hands to get in the Champions League positions next season. People might say Villa will drop points but if we play like we did last night, which is hardly a one off this season, then so will we. This is not like the season Sp*rs imploded, or their arses exploded, Villa are much better than that.
I really can’t understand why he hasn’t moved heaven and earth to bring in more players during this transfer window. It’s obvious this team needs freshening up, it needs the a bit of a spark, something different, and that does not come from players coming back from injury. I know we’re on our best run of the season but the problems are still there, the issues of quality and consistency still affect us, and while I will absolutely agree that the chequebook is not always the answer I firmly believe that in this case it is.
It’s unlikely to happen though. If there’s any spending it will Arshavin and that’s it. The central midfielder won’t be coming and we’ll muddle through the rest of the season with the centre-halves that have struggled since the start. And maybe it will be enough to finish in the top 4, I sincerely hope it is, but I can’t say I’m overly confident.
I realise this morning’s blog is a bit gloomy but it’s borne out of genuine concern for our team and the way we’re playing at the moment. We have 15 games left this season, it’s a cliché but every single one of them is a cup final. We have to approach them with that kind of mindset. There really should be no more talk of the title, that’s quite obviously a pipe-dream, but finishing in the top 4 has got to the primary aim, followed by putting things right in the summer by adding players to the squad.
Right, that’s about that. More, and an Arsecast, tomorrow.
