Morning, back to normal now after the bank holiday, and what mental stuff that was in the title race last night.
Liverpool 3-0 up against Crystal Pulis and they end up drawing 3-3. It’s like nobody wants to take control this season. We’ve been out in front and blown it; Liverpool have had a couple of moments where they could more or less have sealed it; Chelsea’s little horse keeps dropping points to teams in the bottom half of the table; and it’d be quite tempting to have a little flutter on Man City doing something stupid against Villa tomorrow night. I mean, you wouldn’t put it past them.
Speaking of the title, Wojciech Szczesny has been talking about our run at it this season, and a bit like Per Mertesacker the other day has been fairly upfront with his thoughts. Quoted widely in today’s press, he said:
We should be fighting for the title. I believe we should be in a position to challenge to win the Premier League.
And further:
I never considered fourth place before the start of the season as a successful season and a good position. I play for Arsenal because I want to win the title every year.
I think it’s perfectly valid to question whether or not we did enough in the transfer market last summer to build a team/squad that could win the title, but I’ve never been able to understand the notion that all we want is fourth place. The manager’s unfortunate choice of words about what finishing in the top four means have been skewed to the point of parody now, but like it or not, it is something that every team below us this season would like to have achieved.
It is, as Wenger has said, the ‘minimum requirement’, not the objective, but there has been a sense that with the competition for the title, we’ve probably chosen to settle for it a bit in the last few seasons because we haven’t been able to compete financially with them. That is no longer the case. We have money in the bank, we have an extra £60m per season coming in from Emirates and Puma, not forgetting the cash that will be raised through the unnecessary and exploitative 3% rise in ticket prices, so it’s good to hear one of the key players speak so openly about what the expectations should be.
Szczesny even made it fairly clear how he thinks this should be achieved. Despite touching on how injuries to key players have disrupted our season, he called for new signings to make the difference in 2014/15:
One thing we have learned is that we are good enough to challenge next year, and hopefully add a little bit more strength as well with a couple of new players coming in.
It’s early in the season, so it’s not got to the point we did last summer when every week a senior player was practically exhorting the club to get busy with the chequebook, but it’s there right from the start. We all know we need to improve the squad a bit to compete properly, so too does Szczesny.
The other key issue that the big Pole faces is the FA Cup final and who plays. He is, by all accounts, very professional about the whole thing and understands the situation very well, saying:
It’s the boss’s decision to make, not an easy one, because there is a No1 at the club and a goalkeeper who is the reason we are in the FA Cup final. I think Lukasz has done so well that he deserves to play but, having said that, I’m a professional and I would love to play in the Cup final.
I’m on record a number of times now to say if it were me picking the team I’d go with Szczesny. He’s the number 1 at the club for a reason, and in a final you play your best team. Sentiment should go out the window. It doesn’t always work (remember Wenger bringing back a barely fit Sol Campbell and Ashley Cole for the CL final in Paris in place of Senderos and Flamini who had been part of a record breaking defence in the run to that game?), but I think it’s the obvious thing to do.
Although, having spoken to somebody this weekend about Szczesny, my fears that he’d feel excluded from any potential success if Fabianski played were assuaged, I still think for the development of a goalkeeper who is going to be number 1 at this club for years to come, it’d be more beneficial to us in the long-run if he were the man who played in a cup winning side. But, I suppose, the key phrase there is ‘cup winning side’ and that’s the most important thing regardless of who plays.
We don’t have too long to wait to find out the manager’s decision, but we do have a final Premier League game against Norwich on Sunday. There are reports that Jack Wilshere could be back for that one, and if the manager does want to rotate his squad, then the midfielder is a good candidate to come in to try and prove his fitness ahead of the cup final and, of course, the World Cup.
Finally, Abou Diaby reveals he thought about quitting football during what he called his ‘black season’, and when you consider how bad things have been for him in the past, it gives you a good idea of how difficult he must have found the last 12 months or so.
And that’s about that for this morning. If you haven’t yet had a chance to listen to yesterday’s Arsecast Extra, give it a go here. On the agenda, all the post West Brom excitement, talk of Carlos Candle and that lad Cesc, fleets of mini-pigs and the shocking interior of Charlie Adams’ mouth.
Have a good one.
