Yesterday afternoon I watched a stream of the Aston Villa v Stoke game. With just a couple of minutes to go and Villa 2-0 up I decided enough was enough.
I went downstairs to get changed to go and play 5-a-side. I came back upstairs to look at the league table, to despair at the 8 point gap, and couldn’t believe Stoke had managed to score 2 late goals to draw the game. So instead of 8 points the gap is just 6.
If we beat West Brom tomorrow night the gap is just 3. Villa then have to play Man City the following night. Maybe I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself there but it is an indication of just how quickly things can change in football. I mean, look at what’s happened in Spain. Barcelona were walking away with the league. They were unstoppable, playing brilliant football, and had opened up a 12 point lead over Real Madrid.
Just a couple of weeks later that gap is now just 4 points and anything can happen from there. So it gives us a much more cheerful, positive start to the week. I said yesterday we needed a miracle. Stoke scoring 2 against Villa in the last 4 minutes is as close to miraculous as Premier League football gets. It’s up to use to capitalise and put the pressure on. Villa don’t play until Wednesday. If we can close the gap to 3, breathe down their necks a little bit … who knows?
And as if that wasn’t enough to bring some cheer to an Arsenal heart, seeing David Bentley miss a penalty in the Carling Cup final was utterly hilarious. The same bloke who lashed a ball from a roof into a skip 70 yards away (without special fx, naturally … *cough*) couldn’t hit the target from 12 yards.
Maybe I’m a petty man, a small, petty man, for getting my kicks from the misfortune of others, but David Bentley is rat-faced chav whose catastrophes will always be thigh-slappers to me.
And to ensure your week gets off to a good start there’s further good news in that Theo Walcott returns to full training today and should be available for first team action soon.
Now, back to matters more Arsenal Arsene Wenger has reacted to questions about whether or not fans are losing faith with the team. His reply is quite blunt. He says:
I don’t know. That is not my worry. I believe it’s not the biggest problem, not the biggest worry. The biggest worry is that we don’t win games that we should win.
Quite right, what the fans think should not be his biggest worry. The biggest worry should be that his team can’t score, that they can’t beat opponents they really should beat. The fans unrest is a consequence of that and will disappear if we start winning games again.
He goes on to say:
I feel the players are showing enough desire but, when you don’t get results, the first thing people always doubt is the desire.
Now I don’t think for a second that the players don’t want to win the league games, of course they do. But we have this peculiar record this season of saving our best performances for the big games. A lacklustre display against Sunderland was no indication of how we would perform against Roma which would give you no indication of how we’d go back to lacklustre for Fulham.
And he spelt out why that was, saying the team lacked the maturity to prepare properly for the league games. I find that hard to take. There were no real kids in that Arsenal team on Saturday. Some young players, Denilson the most raw, but beyond that this is a team with a lot of experience. Samir Nasri is young but has played close to 200 first team games in his career, Diaby perhaps, but the rest have plenty of football and maturity.
How can you say Almunia, Gallas, Toure, Clichy, Sagna, Arshavin, van Persie, Nasri aren’t mature enough to prepare well and prioritise a league game you have to win? I think it was Arsene clutching at straws in the post-match press conference.
A shift in attitude is what’s needed. In old-fashioned terms a ‘kick up the arse’. I don’t think there’s anything more to it than that, to be honest. They need to be told in no uncertain terms that every game is vital, that there is no fixture any more important than any other. The same effort has to be put into every game and anyone who watched the last 10 minutes against Fulham saw an Arsenal team more or less give up.
Arse. Kick. Kick. Arse. Simple.
Anyway, I don’t want to drag things down after such a marvellous start to the week. Villa lose, Bentley misses, Theo’s on his way back. Let us be cheered by those things. Let us, even for a short time, believe that the miracle can happen.
We’ve got to go to West Brom tomorrow night and there are going to be some tired legs, I guess. But I hope those tired legs will be attached to sore arses after being kicked up them by the manager, by Pat Rice, by whoever else feels like kicking them. And if kicking those arses gets us a result tomorrow night then I shall apply myself for the job of official arse-kicker.
“Mr Hill-Wood, pass me my kickin’ boots…”
A fuller preview of West Brom on tomorrow’s blog. Finally for today the winner of the Arsenal TV Online competition. The 6 month subscription goes to Adrian Lightly, well done to you, I’ll be in touch to get your details etc.
Right so, go happily into this Monday. Till tomorrow.
