So it’s Chelsea at the Bridge on Sunday. Another crucial game. It really isn’t good to be having so many crucial games before December has even got going. Most Gooners seem to have a strange confidence about our chances going into what ought to be one of our most fiendishly difficult games all season.
I reckon this feeling comes primarily from the fact that Arsenal under Wenger always seem to overperform in games where nobody gives them a chance. We lose to a string of diddy teams and appear to have entirely lost the plot. We then play gorgeous football and beat Man U, before reverting to former plot-losing. Go figure. I think much of this is down to the mental dynamics of the current dressing room, with players visibly raising their commitment levels for so-called “big” games and tending to see games against lesser opposition as somehow less worthy of their effort.
This always seems most obvious to me in midfield. Against Stoke Denilson went through the game at a jog, lightly pressing the opposition but never getting stuck in. The attitude seems to be – “we’re better than you and so we’ll just wait for you to give us the ball then we’ll score” which of course, isn’t really how football works, especially where quite a lot of that “being better” comes from aggression and ball-winning. Switch to the United game where he’s up against Carrick and Anderson and Denilson thinks “these guys are worth playing against” and is transformed into a snarling terrier, the kind that, were he to turn up week on week, might win you a league.
Chelsea’s midfield is ludicrously good, so we expect a similarly alarming improvement from our boys on Sunday. Perhaps this is one reason why optimists still feel we have a chance in the Champions League. One such is Peter Hill-Wood, who has promised Arsene cash to burn and also said:
I certainly want to finish in the top four in the league, and perhaps (win) the Champions League. We’ve played pretty well in Europe on the whole so far, and that would be very nice.
Yes it would, wouldn’t it Pete. Except you make it sound “very nice” in the way that jammy dodgers and walks on crisp autumn mornings are very nice, whereas I would see it as “very nice” in a rather more running around Seven Sisters inexplicably stark bollock naked howling “YEEEEAAH! GET IT UP YOU! WE’RE BY FAR THE GREATEST TEAM THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN!” kind of way. But I’m sure we mean the same thing, really.
The thing about having a team of raw kids is that it makes you the underdog in Europe. Admittedly this can sometimes lead to being pulverised by a team who is not an underdog, but often the 2-legged format sees the weaker side come out on top. Liverpool always do this, and you just feel that Arsenal might do something similar with their underdoggery. Let’s hope so.
Watching Portsmouth vs AC Milan, you couldn’t help noticing the vast number of Gooners or former Gooners on show: Traore, Campbell, Kanu, Flamini, Senderos and, of course, Tony Adams himself for whom I think we all felt gutted at the end. If we could have all of these former players back for Sunday that would really help, especially Kanu (I still love him) who might fancy doing this again. Barry Davies: THAT IS AMAZING! Quite.
Transfer goss has kicked off in the last few days. Names in the tabloid hat range from Podolski to Xavi to Giovinco to Huntelaar, all pretty predictable and unlikely in my view. It’s strange isn’t it that Arsenal’s main failings seem so obviously defensive and yet no tabloid journalist has the originality to identify genuine options in defence or defensive midfield. Perhaps this is because, as always, they actually know nothing whatsoever about who we might sign and can’t really be arsed to find out and so just trot out the same old names over and over again.
That said, I cannot really begin to describe how fantastic a signing Clarence Seedorf would be. He is almost exactly what we need.
Thoughts?
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