We’ve had some disappointing nights in Europe down the years. Too many to mention and enough to garner their own acronym here on Arseblog, but last night has to be the most disappointing, heartbreaking of them all.
What was supposed to be one of the biggest nights at the Grove became a night to forget after just 10 minutes. Arsenal started promisingly, we were busy, passed it well, full of energy. And then Kieran Gibbs slipped, Ronaldo’s cross went behind him and Park got the luck of the bounce and finished smartly to put United one up.
On its own not a disaster and there can be no finger pointing at Gibbs who was obviously crushed by the mistake. Anyone can slip. We’ve seen Gael Clichy make bigger mistakes than that and the young man should hold his head high for the job he’s done since he came into the team. We all suspected United might score and for them to do so after 8 minutes was probably better than after 80. We had time to make it better.
Then the ref, who was generous to United all night I thought, bought a Ronaldo dive from a van Persie challenge and gave United a free kick a good 35-40 yards out. The ballerina took it himself, Almunia got it all wrong and United were 2-0 up. The Grove was silenced, Arsenal heads went down, it was all over. The crowd knew, the players knew, Arsene knew. It was over. Afterwards Arsene said it was ‘impossible’ to come back from that.
It would be nice to say that we responded and peppered the United goal but we didn’t. We had a first half to forget to add to the first and second halves at Old Trafford. Three halves of poo. And the second was more of the same. Misplaced passes, poor crossing, and United quite sensibly got their men behind the ball. At 3-0 up on aggregate you would expect nothing less so it was difficult to create anything.
We pressed though and got caught with the counter-attack sucker punch. A flowing move beginning and ending with Ronaldo saw them make it 3-0 meaning we had to score 5 to win. And with the greatest of respect to our lads we could play until Christmas before we scored 5 past this United team.
A consolation goal came via a Robin van Persie penalty after Darren Fletcher stupidly chopped down Cesc in front of goal. We might have had one more when Cesc got in behind the defence but his tame sidefoot summed up Arsenal during the 180 minutes of this tie.
In the end it finished 1-3 on the night, 1-4 overall and despite my rather intense feeling of disappointment and hurt there’s no doubt in my mind that the best team won. Leaving aside the first two goals tonight which were unlucky, and even the referee who was a bit crap but hardly cost us the game, it was United who made all the chances.
Over the course of the two games Almunia must have made 7 or 8 extremely good saves. I know he was at fault for the second tonight but more than any Arsenal player he kept it respectable when you think about it. How many saves did van der Sar make? One from van Persie tonight is about all I can remember.
I don’t want to say it was men against boys (and someone needs to staple Evra’s ‘men against babies’ comment to the dressing room wall before the league game) but we have to look at United and say well done. They played the best football, they made the most chances, they scored the most goals, they deserve to go through. We can’t feel hard done by in any shape or form.
And we need to look at United as the standard that we have to aspire to (from a footballing point of view, of course). Whatever about the number of utter cunts on their team, they play really nice football. They’re the Premier League champions, they’re the Champions of Europe, are on course to retain that title, and much as it hurts, and it does fucking hurt let me tell you, they’ve won those titles because they’re a very, very good team.
They’re better than us. There can’t be an Arsenal fan who watched those games and didn’t realise that. Arsene Wenger can’t have looked at those two games not realised that his team is not as good as Man United. On any day you can pull of a result as we showed earlier in the season but ultimately the better team won the day in the crunch game. At home, in front of our own fans, we got destroyed on the night and I’ll congratulate United and then hope they get stuffed by Barcelona in the final.
From our point of view I don’t want to go into the ins and outs of the performance. As a team we didn’t play well in either leg, some of the individual performances weren’t up to scratch, and to go out in the manner we did was painful in the extreme. Arsene talked his team up all week long, and I know why he did it, but they’ve left him with egg all over his face.
To me the reasons are simple. We missed our settled back four, Gallas in particular at the business end of the season, and, at the end of the day, some of the players aren’t good enough. That’s all. I’m not going to start naming names or anything like it. The lads did brilliantly to get to the semi-finals of the Champions League. It was unthinkable four months ago that we’d be on the brink of the final so credit to them for that. But the sad fact is that this is about as much as you can expect from this group of players.
My solution is simple and it’s something I’ve said all season long: Arsene needs to spend some money on experienced, quality players. We’ve seen what kind of an impact Arshavin has made and it’s because he’s a good player and the right age. He improves the side. We need more of those signings. We need experience. If Arsene wants these kids to be as good as he keep saying then he should do them favour of bringing in players they can learn from. If Arsene really wants to win the Champions League, if he wants his team to compete properly for the league, then that’s what he has to do, in my opinion.
There’s obviously the nucleus of a good side in this group of players. They’ll have learnt from this European run, some of them will have anyway, and we need to make sure we get the maximum from those players. To do that you bring in better, more experienced players to replace the ones who aren’t up to it and have proven themselves below par throughout the campaign.
However, that’s a discussion for the weeks and months ahead. We have three games still to play this season, no matter how little we feel like playing them. And the worst thing is they’re not just any old games. The next one is Chelsea, then it’s United away. A chance for revenge or more pain at the hands of despicable bastards?
Afterwards Arsene said:
It’s the most disappointing defeat. The fans were up for a big night and to disappoint people, it hurts really. The most difficult thing for me is that we have the feeling that we never played in the semi-final. We can only look at ourselves.
And how can you argue with any of that? You just hope that the ‘looking at ourselves’ brings about some positive change. I love Arsene. I think he’s a fantastic man and a great manager but he’s not infallible. He makes mistakes.
I don’t want to dwell on the Chelsea semi because even if Arshavin had played it was no guarantee we’d win or that Fabianski wouldn’t hand the game to them but I’m sure he’ll look at Everton sitting in the final and wish he’d played the Russian from the start. Last night would have been less painful with a cup final still to come – and a cup final that was realistically our best chance of a trophy this season. It may not have the prestige of the Champions League but it’s a trophy and one I think this team should have won this season.
We’ve enjoyed a few months of this season because the team has performed above our expectations. We didn’t expect to get to a Champions League semi-final, the most optimistic of us could not have predicted a 21 match unbeaten run in the league after losing to Stoke, Fulham, Hull, Man City and Villa. Yet when it comes to the crunch this will show up as another season without a trophy, another season of building a young team. And there’s only so long you can go without success before you have to change things.
My feeling is, now that our season is essentially over, that Arsene has to change. He has to bring in the experienced players we spoke about earlier, he has to stop thinking of all his players as all-rounders. Strikers should play as strikers and not right wingers, wingers as wingers and not as holding midfielders, midfielders as midfielders and not support strikers, right backs as right backs and not right wingers or central midfielders. He has to bring in players who will improve this team and who will help us win trophies.
As Arsenal fans we consider ourselves to be a top club. We have a great stadium, some excellent players, we compete in Europe every year, our recent record in the CL is good, yet we have now gone four years without a trophy and you have to ask if that lack of success would be tolerated at other top clubs. Don’t get me wrong, I still think Arsene is the man for the job. For now.
What he does this summer will determine whether or not he’s the man for the job in the future. With the right kind of spending he can improve this team (although I get a strange sense of deja-vu typing that). If he chooses to rely on players who have let him down this season then it might well be time to start asking questions about him.
And before I’m accused of moaning or forgetting where we were before Wenger came along, I’ll say this: Arsene Wenger is being judged by the standards that Arsene Wenger has set. Doubles, league titles, FA Cups. I don’t think it’s unfair to suggest we’ve fallen below the admittedly high standards we’ve grown accustomed to. As he said famously some years ago ‘If you eat caviar every day it is difficult to come back to sausages‘. We’re eating sausages, Arsene.
He’ll have been hurt by how his team was taken apart by United. Faith and belief in young players is all good and well but when reality slaps you in the face, humiliates you at home in front of your own fans, many of whom walk out of the ground with 30 minutes still to play, then maybe it’s time to change your thinking. It’s something Arsene is obviously considering. After the match at the press conference he was asked if he needed to look outside the club to find solutions (ie – new players), he said:
I have to take some distance from this season. We are on a consistent run, twenty-one games unbeaten, but recently in a game where it mattered, like Chelsea or tonight, we couldn’t win and that, of course, needs thinking.
True that, Arsene. Anyway, this is all a bit rambling and incoherent. Probably because of booze. In fact, definitely because of booze. The negative amongst us will say we’ve gone without silverware again, the positive will say we got within 90 minutes of two cup finals this year. The truth, if there is such a thing in football, probably lies somewhere in the middle.
The only thing I know is that all of us, no matter our perspective or how we react to defeats last night, love the Arsenal. We do it in our own ways and today we’ll all be hurting about last night.
Till tomorrow.
