by Tony Attwood
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An Arsenal win is of course the last thing the journalists and bloggers wanted since their whole narrative is that Arsenal are appalling, every player needs to be sold, the club is in turmoil, the fans are against the team and … well, repeat ad infinitum.
So what did we get. Pleasure at the goals? Excitement as two of our new recruits are emerging from their shells? Relief for Freddie?
Well… actually what we got in reaction to last night’s game was…
Arsenal fans blame one player for West Ham goal – ‘Disgraceful defending’ (
Yes there was a tiddly widdly bit of fun of course as with
West Ham’s stadium announcer says David Luiz is coming on – it was actually Guendouzi (
and the inevitable negatives
Huge blow as Arsenal loses both fullbacks in West Ham clash (
But yes there was a real bit of technical insight as with
Arsenal star Aubameyang explains Ljungberg’s half time team talk for West Ham win (
in which it is revealed that “At half-time, Freddie [Ljunberg] told us to play with a higher tempo.” It must have seemed like it was hardly like leaving the pitch. But well, I am glad we got that one sorted out.
However elsewhere the raving and raging goes on
Jamie Carragher rages at ‘shocking’ Arsenal player despite West Ham win (
but you see most of these headlines were written before the match started. (Oh yes and for clarity Arsenal won for the first time in 150 games, or something like that.
However not everyone feels content with the win. As for example…
“Cursed”, “Announce relegation” – These Arsenal fans left frustrated as star hauled off injured against West Ham (
‘Should never play again’: Some Arsenal fans tear into ‘coward’ on their team despite win (
So it goes on. And on and on. It is like a machine rolling on and one spewing forth its bile, desperately trying to infect the few Arsenal reporters remaining who do not hate Freddie, hate the club, hate the players and yet believe what the nutters on radio, TV, newspapers and blogs say.
On the way back home I listened for a while to BBC Radio 5 (I know, an appalling habit, but I pay my licence fee so I feel I ought to sometime) and it really turned out to be very entertaining as the commentators were utterly unprepared for an Arsenal victory and had no idea how to explain what they had seen, simply because there seems to be a rule never to mention psychology on Radio 5.
Or to put it in common parlance, they weren’t up for it, then things went their way, and then they were up for it. There was some booing from the away support at half time – not a clever idea in my opinion but then some of these people had been card carrying Wenger outers and must have wondered how their tactical approach could have got it all so wrong.
But we knew, as we had already seen it, that Nicolas Pépé is a sensational player who has just been wondering what sort of idiot world he had wandered into and his natural talent just came to life. We have our new superman. Just as we have our new super boy in Martinelli.
Özil looked like a man who recognised the fact that he was playing with players in his league and he went wandering around pitch just making sure that every State Aid player got the message.
And just to make sure it really looked like the Arsenal of old, one full back went off in the warm up and the other went off during the game. Mind you when Kolasinac came on he looked to me like a man who believed that the two guys who threatened his and Mesut in the car jack incident were both playing for WHAM and he was going to work his way around the team to find out where they were.
I would say that one had to feel sorry for the journalists who have spent all season saying how awful this team is, but I don’t. They are a singularly low lifeforce who should be put on a treadmill and trodden on.
Anyway, as a UK tax payer, I paid, and am continuing to pay for the stadium in which WHAM play, due to a disastrous deal done by Boris Johnson when he was London mayor. So seeing Arsenal pick up some points there always feels like something I deserve.
The negativists will continue to pump out their bile, but we got the win. Let’s hope we can build on it.
It is a sad fact of today that we live in an age of minorities and loudmouths dictating to the majority of rational and sensible people. It doesn’t matter if it is politics, where the majority is now faced with a straight choice between an inveterate liar and a communist – and all thanks to extremist minorities in the two main parties – or political correctness, where our basic freedom of speech has been overruled by minority groups who are desperate to be offended in some way or other, or as here in football, where social media empty vessels shouted the loudest and brought our club to a point where a sensible and measured transfer of the reigns between our greatest ever manager and his chosen successor went from desirable to untenable.
If there is one lesson that history will teach us about the evils of social media it that we must never again pander to loudmouth minorities, just so that the noise will go away until the next time they choose to scream their vitriol of ignorance and stupidity. . . sadly I somehow doubt that the lesson is yet ready to be learnt.
It,s a funny old game saint
Quality players don,t become idiots overnight! But when your team gets selected for a bad run of results ,it’s not hard to get negative and tear the players apart singling them out for the change in fortune.
All that achieves is a massive corrosive confidence loss,and such a run has hit Arsenal.
The answer is to keep believing it won’t last,and stay confident in yourself and your teammates.
Improve whatever situations appear to have gone wrong,and listen to your coach.
This could be the turning point for this squad!But they face city next who also don’t seem to be invincible any more.
If they can get a point or three great.But the main thing is to play with confidence and move on!!!
What is not being said is how Dean gave no foul for the shocking scissor challenge on Pepe. No report mentions the total 12 minutes added time which was for injuries to Arsenal players. No investigation of how Dean can be fit to referee with the lack of protection of our platers whilst most challenges we made were called as fouls. An aspect to our performances could be the over eager carding of any Arsenal player making a challenge or pointing out to the ref that one of our players had suffered a worse challenge that was not considered a foul by the stinking idiots of the Pigmob. I hope this win sticks in their throats. Great to have something to cheer about again long may it continue
turned on radio 5 -turned off after a couple of minutes – something about the arsenal culture . seem to delight in negatives. they dont seem to realise some people actually support arsenal they are not there just for those who do not
Laos goner.. I’m glad someone else mentioned that foul. We are often told that player safety is taken into consideration for challenges and then we see a jumping scissor challenge! A challenge that has caused many a knee ligament injury and nothing is done. It was a borderline red but a definite yellow. Follow this with the fact that he then wiped out Pepe when he was injured himself because he knew he could! Mike Dean should have to explain his decision making over this period!
But we won and the team actually moved into new positions to receive the ball! Players actually passed between the lines of defenders and turned their midfield! An hour of playing in front of West Ham and we were 1-0 down.. ten minutes of playing around them and we’re 3-1 up!
Thoroughly agreed with the comment in the piece regarding psychology. You could see players scared to make a mistake – considering our ‘support’, it’s a fair mentality – but a soon as a few things come off, the confidence to do it more often comes back and in the end there were triangles of passing all over the place.. passing and moving.
We’ll now go and ship 5 goals to Man City, but at least we won’t have to be reminded every two seconds of our worst run since the 70’s and Chris Sutton calling half our squad ‘disgraceful’!
Paul
Good post.
Just want to expand on one point you made:
“but at least we won’t have to be reminded every two seconds of our worst run since the 70’s and Chris Sutton calling half our squad ‘disgraceful’!”
I wouldn’t count on that my friend.
This from Sutton when Poch got the elbow:
“Tottenham have sacked the manager everybody else will want. They have sacked the man who led them in a Champions League final 171 days ago.
They have sacked the coach who built an empire on a shoestring budget and ensured they could compete with the world’s elite.”
_______
Yes they did well to reach the Champions League final last year. But it’s ONE final and THEY LOST. In fact they were terrible, as they always are when they have a chance of glory. Hence despite Pochettino “building and Empire” Spurs continue to flatter to deceive. They have still won just one league cup in something like 20 years.
We also reached our European final and were terrible.
They finished 4th in the Premier League just 1 point ahead of Arsenal.
Spurs, even with a run of results under Mourinho are still currently just the 1 point ahead of Arsenal.
So in reality there’s not that much difference between the 2 sides/Clubs is there, well not enough to justify these 2 statements from Sutton is there:
Again, this about SPURS:
“They have sacked the coach who built an empire”
– yep that ‘Empire’ that over the last decade has won NOTHING, ZERO, NOT A SAUSAGE.
Last night he said this about Arsenal:
“Did you expect them to be much different?” added Sutton, a Premier League title winner with Blackburn in 1994-95. “It has been the same for the last decade and it’s still the same problem.”
-Yep that same old problem that over the last decade has won us 3 FA Cups.
When Wenger helped build a new stadium and kept us in the top 4 on a ‘shoestring budget’ for all those years, was he praised for ‘Building an Empire’ by Sutton?
Somehow I don’t think so.
From Suttons take on the 2 Clubs you’d think it was Spurs who’d won some trophies and not Arsenal, and as we were told it’s all about Trophies. Losing Champions league finals is hardly the stuff of Empires is it.
Darth Vader would turn in his grave.
Fr
OT: Corruption
I believe I seen it on SkySprots, probably elsewhere. The US-DOJ I believe has released a report about the 2018 FIFA World Cup, and it says that some former FIFA president corruptly helped Russia secure the games. Septic Bladder (I’m clean, I’m clean) was the president of FIFA at the time. But the report doesn’t actually name anyone.
OT: In the News
Football365 is shaming Arsenal
Paul Merson is shaming Arsenal
FoLo is shaming Arsenal
Daily Mail is shaming Arsenal
The Gaudnmjsakfvnmjnhrif is shaming Arsenal
…
One report of last night referred to Kieran having injured his shoulder in a seemingly innocuous challenge!!! If it was innocuous, why was he injured? He didn’t injure himself, he was injured by a WHU player.
Then Cresswell was mentioned as having been injured in a challenge by Pepe. Really?
Cresswell, who should have been sent off in the first half for a dangerous scissor tackle assault on Pepe, did actually injure himself in his second-half repeat assault on the same player. A small bit of poetic justice!
John L
Wasn’t that 2nd foul by Creswell the one that actually got him his yellow card ?
So how was that a foul by Pepe?
As far as I’m concerned it’s simple little comments such as that, which is in fact a blatant lie, flying in the face of what everyone who actually saw it knows, that proves an agenda to paint us in a bad light/guilty/incompetent at every opportunity.
Personally I think his first ‘tackle’ on Pepe was worse, and to my mind deserving of at the very least a yellow, but the following article in the Guardian back in 2013 may explain why Dean didn’t see it that way, and given how the revue panel overturned his decision, who can blame him?
https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2013/jan/18/two-footed-tackles-referees-difficult-decision
I cannot abide Dean, and his body language towards the end of the match looked anything other than happy, I nevertheless felt he had one of his fairer matches.
They committed 12 fouls to our 6 and received 2 cards to our zero.
But yes that first tackle looked bad, but it seems as the rules stand, Dean did make the correct call, as unbelievable as that may seem.
OT: In the News
Ancelloti has apparently been sacked in Italy. My hope is that he was NOT talking to Arsenal (contrary to medja idjuts).
After having watched the whole repeat of the matched , I am gladdened by the spirit , joy and camaraderie displayed by our players and also Freddie’s enthusiasm at the end . A great big thank you to the travelling away support for the manner they backed the team
and cherred them on.
I of course , muted the commentary , which made my viewing more pleasant and enjoyable.
Hope we keep up this renewed spirit and start moving up the table.
Up the Gunners !
I think Cresswell should have walked after the first “tackle”. It was reckless.
Dean was letting WHU players get away with all sorts, but they still managed to accumulate two cards to our zero. In the presence of fair officiating, we would have won the game by a much greater margin against 10 men.
Chris Sutton is the disgrace. Remember Blackburn 1997. Empire my arse.