I have watched a lot of football since the season started up again, not only Arsenal’s matches but the other title contenders as well as highlights of every match. And it seems to me, having watched these matches or at least highlights, that Arsenal fans are overreacting.
Now Manchester United drew against Newcastle at home in the first game, but other than that every game the other top teams have played has resulted in wins. Fair enough then, they must be doing better than us.. But that isn’t the case at all. Chelsea demolished Pompey admittedly, but other than that game the top four have struggled in every game. Chelsea SHOULD have lost against Wigan, Liverpool SHOULDN’T have won any game so far this season, and Man Utd SHOULD have lost against Newcastle.
But the fact is they didn’t, and unfortunately for us, we did. That’s how it works out sometimes, had van Persie scored moments before Fulham did and Ade had put his header slightly more to the left we’d be talking about winning 4/4 games this season. Man Utd had a similar start last season, and so while the Fulham game highlighted a few problems that we undoubtedly have, I am not too worried. In fact, I strongly believe we’ll end up winning our first trophy for 4 years this season, and you can quote me on that.
The Fulham game was simply a game where we didn’t manage to scrape a win in the fashion we did at the beginning of last season. We move on. I mean, the shocking passing we were treated to by Denilson and co. looked like Argentina compared to Liverpool’s performance last night, so God knows what your reaction would be to a performance like that against a team just as poor as the FC Twente outfit we beat 6-0 on aggregate.
And on the subject of the FC Twente match last night, my personal opinion was that it was a solid and very professional performance from the Gunners. FC Twente were so scared of getting hammered the kept the ball to their back 4 the entire time they had possession, and when they eventually grew bored of that and lumped the ball forward we immediately take advantage, showing the sharpness lacking from the weekend’s display in west London. I will focus on the attakcing problems we have in another article either today or tommorrow, as none of our strikers look particularly sharp at the moment, while I will have to get around to gloating about how right I was that Nasri can be easily more effective that Hleb as well.
So just to finish - Gunners fans, have some realism, you are able to watch possibly the best football throughout the world week in, week out, so start to believe and give your support to our talented players’ (even Adebayor, despite everything that happened he will still be an important player for us) push for trophies and don’t throw your toys out of the pram on week 2 just because we lose to a rapidly improving Fulham team after (crucially) an international break.
