By Tony Attwood
It was quite a Tuesday evening. We drove to Peterborough for our first visit since 2003, and just as at the start of that wonderful season, we lost 1-0. And although this may not turn out to be another wonderful season, last night overall was rather fine.
It was a young under 21 team, playing an experienced Peterborough team – with many of our under 21s having moved up to the under 23s or even the first team squad. So younger and younger players have been promoted into the under 21s, and actually holding on to just conceding one was not too bad.
We had one first teamer: Mavropanos. He was injured on 12 May and this was, I think, his first return to action. He was solid and careful, as befits a player returning after a series of injuries.
As for last night, the Peterborough ground has been upgraded over the years – it is now seated on three sides, and they have a totally bonkers mascot dressed as a rabbit waving a giant carrot, for reasons that did not become at all clear during the course of the evening.
Also their fans appear to be in a time warp – at least when it comes to singing, as we were treated to a run down of songs last heard somewhere around the 1980s. But of course, each to their own.
There were about 500 Arsenal fans in the crowd of just over 3000, which was not a bad showing, and man of the match for Arsenal was Matt Macey who played superbly and kept the score down to just the one.
So it was an evening out, a chance to catch up on the chit chat, and see a ground not seen for many a year and not a very inspiring performance at all from Arsenal’s very under 21s.
And thus back to the car and the drive home with a few phone calls to the folks back home, only to discover the fact that Tottenham had offered up the real entertainment during the evening with a 2-7 home defeat.
Of course the result will raise a lot of commentary once more about why we let Gnabry go, and I won’t meander through that again save to say the two obvious things. First if a player wants to go, it is hard to keep him especially after some very poor loan choices by Arsenal, and second Gnabry always wanted to return to his homeland in order to heighten his chances of playing for his country. Which he did.
But the result reminded me of the Sun’s commentary from a couple of years back, “Nobody does defeats in Europe quite like the Gunners” in which their highlight were the two 5-1 defeats in 2015/16 and 2016/17. “It’s incredible,” the Sun said, “how Arsenal never learn their lesson.”
So will the Sun now turn on the tiny Totts? Will they learn a lesson from this – or indeed from their run of recent results? I’m not sure, although I think it more likely that we will have lots of Tottenham supporters writing in to tell us how awful Arsenal is at the moment, and that we should focus on our team rather than anyone else.
Well yes, but without local rivalry, football is surely less of a fun thing to be involved in.
But that’s what happens whenever we write about other teams, and I never quite get it. You see, to play a football match you need two teams and if one of your rivals is having a bad time, well, the occasional quip is not amiss, it seems to me. And anyway they still have those beer glasses that fill from the bottom, and a bigger stadium than we have.
Anyway, last night’s game exceeds their previous worst home defeat in Europe by quite a big, the previous worst was 1-3 against Benfica in March 2014. But it doesn’t quite get to the level of the 8-0 defeat suffered to FC Köln in July 1995 in the mighty Intertoto Cup group stage.
Meanwhile back with the game we went to see, there was no doubt that Matt Macey was the man of the match for Arsenal keeping the score down with a series of fine saves. Otherwise it was hard to find really positive stories for us in Peterborough.
The team was
Macey
Swanson Clarke Mavropanos Medley Bola
Smith Burton Cottrell
Tormey Greenwood
Can’t tell a lie I had a bit of a snigger watching Spurs last night.
There was no doubt that BM were clinical and that for the first 10-20 minutes Spurs were very good but it soon became apparent that they were expended far too much energy in that opening spell and as it turned out after 60 minutes Spurs were spent.
The speed of BM and the ease they got in behind Spurs was interesting but there clearly is something wrong and for me as a Chelsea supporter I can spot such problems from a hundred or so miles away.
To be fair I doubt many clubs would have been able to keep BM down to just one or two but back to my point that Spurs are at a cross roads and their relative success in terms of reaching the CL final and a succession of top 4 finishes can’t mask the fact that going forward with a significant debt they are in need of serious investment primarily in defensive positions particularly with the ages of their two main CD players and for all the issues that Arsenal have had with players running down their contracts the issues are threefold over at WHL.
I will grudgingly admit Kane is a top finisher but I don’t think his wider contribution would be enough to convince those clubs that could shell out a hundred million or so on him but Son is top top quality and will have suitors if he becomes available. My point here is that yes Spurs spent in the Summer on players who are struggling and just like Pulisic( yes I know he was signed in January) at ours and Pepe at yours none of the big money buys are even close to looking at being the players so much money was spent on getting them on board.
Bad night for the media. Great tweet from Serge.
More results like this and might even start believing those silly rumours around at the moment concerning our nearest and dearest
The carrot waving rabbit is probably a metaphor for the local farm produce & the pests that dig it up.
Dinos could become a pivotal CB for us in years to come, let’s hope he continues to make progress.
G-n-a-b-ry
I’d have to say this had been coming from Gnabry. Incredibly he was still an Arsenal player when he collected the 2016 Olympics football Silver medal for Germany where he was also joint top scorer. Then he was already in the German Senior team by Nov. of that year and last season he was BM 2nd highest goal scorer. Then you read here and there about how Arsenal sold him for crickets.
The question is what if he had stayed? Would the keyboard (trigger) happy fans have been patient with him on Twitter? I think not. Good luck to the kid and lets be happy for him.
Remember when Arsenal (Wenger) was legendary for getting players young/cheap and squeezing world class performances out of them……Adebayor, Kolo, Fabregas, Eboue & Flamini all joined Arsenal for a combined cost of less than 10 Million. Also remember that there were many other bargains (will name no names) that spectacularly backfired.
Even big money moves are not always cut and dried, highly rated proven players can struggle in new league or even a new club in the same league (will name no names).
Mike T
Great post
“To be fair I doubt many clubs would have been able to keep BM down to just one or two but back to my point that Spurs are at a cross roads and their relative success in terms of reaching the CL final and a succession of top 4 finishes can’t mask the fact that going forward with a significant debt they are in need of serious investment primarily in defensive positions particularly with the ages of their two main CD players and for all the issues that Arsenal have had with players running down their contracts the issues are threefold over at WHL.”
I was enjoying last nights capitulation as much as the rest of the country, media excluded of course, but I said something similar to Mrs N.
I think Poch has been over achieving for years. By that I mean he was getting far more out of the whole than the some of the parts. He was achieving more than he should of given his nett spend. But it’s hard, very hard to continue to do that. Eventually, no matter how good you are, lack of funds will find you out, and that is what has happened at Spurs.
I always maintained that Wenger was, by maintaining a top 4 position, actually over achieving given a 10 year period of zero nett spend.
Obviously given the abuse he got not everyone agrees but that was my view and why he had my unwavering support.
I think Pochechino is a very good manager. Not a great manager. You cant be trophy less and be a great manager. But he maybe one day, but not at Spurs.
They are, as you suggest, in a very similar position to that in which we found ourselves. They need investment but it simply isn’t there, or at least doesn’t appear to be, and what’s more it doesn’t seem to be there in the eyes of a lot of the players, hence their retisense in committing to the club, or it seems even the manager.
Once the players sense the club is going backwards, on the pitch at least, players start having their heads turned, if just by their agent.
Players running down their contracts. Where have we Gunners seen that before?
Some might not like it, but the thing we had that Spurs don’t. The thing we had that remained constant and unwavering that Spurs don’t…….was a genius manager 100% committed to the club.
Spurs are at a crossroads.
They either find the money to boost the squad and convince both players and manager to stay, or face the consequences. Consequences that could be catastrophic.
Of course I wouldn’t wish that on them.