It appears that if you are an Arsenal fan you are not enjoying this season

 

 

 

• How Arsenal’s rise is based in part on the success of the Academy
• Which football stadium is the biggest self-inflicted disaster of all time?

By Tony Attwood

A n article in the Daily Telegraph yesterday contained this sentence

“Arsenal are the best team in the country, but their pursuit of a first title in 22 years is too stressful to enjoy, especially as they seem irritatingly unable to take full advantage after Manchester City’s slips.”

That quote comes from the increasingly bizarre Daily Telegraph, and all one can say is “Really?  Are you not enjoying it?”

Well, if not, I can only say “sorry about that” because I know I am enjoying this season, absolutely.

Now maybe the advantage I have is that I am old enough to have seen Asenal win the league (although I started going to Highbury long before that). 

Indeed, one of my eternal memoiries is being at the very final league game of the unbeaten season, and watching Arsenal go in at 1-0 down at half time.   We had, of course, already won the league, but a draw in this last game of the season would make us the only unbeaten team since the first league season.

So we sat there, nervous and quiet, until Arsenal woke up and we won the final game of 2003/4, 2-1.

Meanwhile, I distinctcly heard a radio commentator last night say that Arsenal needed a win to qualify for the next stage of the Champions League.   Really?   Maybe I miscounted, but it didn’t look like that to me.  But still, here’s the table after the game, with all the Premier League teams in bold, just so you don’t miss them.  The gap at the top seems to be six points.

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	G D	PTS
1	Arsenal	7	7	0	0	20	2	+18	21
2	Real Madrid	7	5	0	2	19	8	+11	15
3	Bayern Munich	6	5	0	1	18	7	+11	15
4	Tottenham Hotspur	7	4	2	1	15	7	+8	14
5	Paris Saint-Germain	7	4	1	2	20	10	+10	13
6	Sporting Lisbon	7	4	1	2	14	9	+5	13
7	Manchester City	7	4	1	2	13	9	+4	13
8	Atalanta	6	4	1	1	8	6	+2	13
9	Inter Milan	7	4	0	3	13	7	+6	12
10	Atletico Madrid	6	4	0	2	15	12	+3	12
11	Liverpool	6	4	0	2	11	8	+3	12
12	Borussia Dortmund	7	3	2	2	19	15	+4	11
13	Newcastle United	6	3	1	2	13	6	+7	10
14	Chelsea	6	3	1	2	13	8	+5	10

 

Although also of course I hope you didn’t miss last night’s result involving Manchester City against the mighty Bodo Glimt, which was on at the same time.  Last season, Bodo (if I may call them that) didn’t even make it into the playoff rounds.   And now they beat ManC.   Could it be that in the Champions League, ManC can’t quite get away with what they can in the Premier League?  Are some of these foreign refs slightly more aware of what is going on?   It is possible, and if that is the case, it is to be welcomed.

Anyway, even though Talk Sport last night wanted to persuade us that it was still possible for Arsenal NOT to qualify for the last round and thus HAD TO win the game yesterday (a most desperate attempt to try and keep their audience if ever I heard one), that ruse failed, and of course we won.  And in fact we have won seven out of seven games, so that means it is the knock-out round by-passed (as we knew anyway but the media were trying to suggest we could still slip up).

And of course we were not playing Bodo Glimt, we were playing the team that made it to the final last season.  Yet now we are in the longest winning streak ever for Arsenal in the Champions League.   Of course, the media won’t have it, focusing on Petar Sucic’s equaliser, but really this anti-Arsenal desperation, where it is still being published, is, basically, desperate.

One interesting point from Arteta after the game was that he didn’t speak about cover in each position for when a player is kicked to bits by the opposition, but rather the fact that Arsenal now have “different profiles” in the centre forward spot and with the wingers, so the oppositon don’t know what they are going to face as they pick their XI.    Thus, even if things don’t work out, Arsenal can bring on subs not just to liven the team up but to change the style and confuse the opposition.   

And let us not forget that Arsenal are now tending to change the team radically from match to match, so that until one hour before the start, the opposition really don’t know what they are going to get.

Of course, the media are still shuffling around trying to say that Arsenal are obviously not the best team in Europe despite the league table.   And actually, I think that is good, for it means we are being underestimated all the time.

Anyway, I think that is Arsenal’s last appearance at the stadium as the local authority is going to pull it down now and, I suspect the city will be pleased to see the back of Arsenal coming there and having 18 attempts on goal during the game.

But even if they didn’t enjoy it, I certainly did.