Morning all.
So that’s all the stuff out of the way. Nice work from @arsenal last night as they “live” Tweeted the Anfield 89 game. I saw some journalist wonder if they’d do the same for the 25th anniversary of being beaten by Oldham in the Littlewoods Cup, which is, of course, a remarkably stupid thing to to wonder.
Why would they do that? Enjoying a landmark victory twenty-five years to the day seems like an obvious thing to do, and fair play to them, they made it fun and people joined in. There is no need to qualify it by remembering days which didn’t go so well.
Now, we head towards a summer and all that it entails, but I do wonder if this one is going to be different, or at least a bit more relaxed. I know from my point of view I’m a lot more sanguine about what is to occur and how it occurs than I was last time around, and the reason? Well, we won the cup.
I suspect – and this could be just a crackpot early morning theory – that the frustration that built last summer was amplified by the fact we were still in the ‘How long has it been since Arsenal won a trophy?’ mode. I don’t mean to suggest that the we couldn’t have done things better. I still think we could, and should, have done our business better and in a more timely fashion, but I do believe the dissatisfaction felt was keener because of the desire to win something after so long.
Our desperation to put an end to the drought meant we were so much more invested in what happened in the transfer market, so each passing week felt like we weren’t doing enough to make that happen. You miss out on Higuaín, you get involved in the Suarez thing, the entire summer passes you by before you sign an old player on a free and only on the last day do you splash out big … really big … on a player who placates.
But underneath it all is this angst because you feel like we should have done more and it should have been done earlier. Not simply because you want new players, and new players are nice and shiny and like Christmas presents, but because you want Arsenal to win something. To break that barrier, to rid ourselves of that millstone around our necks.
It all got a bit much. No question. But while I’m obviously curious, and at this early stage excited, about what we’re going to do this time around, the fact that we’ve won a trophy means that craving isn’t so great. We don’t have to do the kind of business that will help us overcome a 16 point gap between us and the winners of the league. It’s just 7 points. And we’ve got the cup under our belt and all the experience and confidence that will give this group of players.
We didn’t do enough last summer, but for all of that we nearly did. For the want of a striker etc etc. Obviously there are other positions which need to be looked at, we might take a few hits here and there (Fabianski, Sagna etc), but you can see how the core of good squad is there and how it can be improved.
However, while on the one hand it feels like the last season just flew by, on the other it was pretty intense. Capped by that fantastic day at Wembley but it did seem like there was a lot going on all the time. For me, at least, there’s a need to step back a bit and just take things as they come. May is no time to get bent out of shape about transfers. I want to see us do things better this summer, but I’m much more que sera, sera about the whole thing.
It sounds blindingly obvious, and maybe due to the fact it had been nine years we just lost sight of it, but winning does change so much. Things feel less angsty. I won’t say ‘serene’, because there’s always something going on somewhere with some people who have to make noise, but I think right now there’s a general air of satisfaction, and hopefully that permeates well into the rest of this off-season.
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For those of you looking for this week’s Arsecast Extra with Gunnerblog, fear not. It will be available on Wednesday this week, but if you haven’t already heard it, last Friday’s round-table Arsecast should give you plenty to listen to. I’m not 100% if we’ll keep up the Wednesday schedule, it could be a bit more ad hoc than that depending on what’s happening, or not, but we’ll see.
I’m hoping that at some point the great rains of May 2014 will go away and we might have something approaching a summer which would allow me to be completely chilled out. One of my ambitions is to record an Arsecast directly from a hammock out the back drinking mojitos and eating meat straight off the barbecue. First, I need a hammock. I wonder does anybody know where I might get one?
I heard good things about The Hammock Hut, on third. Anyone know anything about it?
Finally, just a quick update about the book. Today we’re hoping to complete all the individual orders that came in and we did get some of the double orders out yesterday (waiting on supplies to send the rest today). I know it’s been a bit of a wait but we’ve really been going as fast as we can. Hopefully by the end of today we’ll have sent out everything and books should be with you soon.
Thanks for your patience, and as always if you have any questions/queries, just email via the contact form (or directly if you have the address) and I’ll be happy to update as much as I can.
Till tomorrow.
