A Tale of Two Cities

Matchday 11 of the English Premier League saw a Tale of Two Cities being played out. Over in Manchester, league champions Manchester City-with their unbeaten home record at stake- rallied from a goal down to grab all three points with only two minutes to go. Even more ruthless were Manchester United, who at 2-0 down and playing away from home had it all to do. Come full time however, and Aston Villa were left reeling after a Chicharito hat-trick meant they left the Villa Park with all three points. Vintage United performance. We, unfortunately, find ourselves on the opposite end of the scale. 2-0 up and cruising after 23 minutes, you would expect a team of Arsenal’s caliber to simply see the game out. True to form however, we then proceeded to self-destruct and as a result Fulham almost pulled off a memorable win at the Emirates. Forget that Arteta missed a penalty late in stoppage time; we really should have been home dry by then. It was almost criminal the way we threw the three points, yet you could get the feeling that Arsenal fans have come to expect no less. Just as United fans know they will win regardless of the situation their team finds itself in. It’s just the stuff that champions are made of (pardon the cliché).

Now you definitely know that something is wrong when you spend the entirety of the game on the edge of your seat and with crossed fingers just hoping that the team doesn’t choke. And let’s be honest, this didn’t just start this weekend. It’s been more or less a recurring theme with the Arsenal in our last 7 trophy-less years. Our most recent final, the Carling Cup (now Capital One Cup) against Birmingham last year is a case in point. We change the players, but the result is still the same.

We seem to lack the tenacity to grind out results at times; we don’t approach games with the mentality that says “We’re winning this game no matter what”. Some might say its die to lack of a back-bone in the team; others might say it’s down to a lack of leadership but these are all old excuses really. The captaincy has changed almost every season but the same frailty still remains. The belief just isn’t there, and this needs to be addressed with urgency. A player lacking confidence is bad, but a team lacking confidence might be catastrophic. Now more than never does the team (and the fans) need a pick-me-up to get us going again. Like stringing together a run of consecutive wins for example, this would represent a record that the players would like to keep going. Or maybe a player stepping up and putting in performances that would make other players look up to him, a talisman in the mould of RvP last season. I do understand that these are solutions that have been tried and tested and have only had short-term success.

Therefore I looked to the beginning of the season, and at that time it looked like a certain Steve Bould had sorted this out once and for all. Our defence had gotten that air of invincibility again; we did not look like conceding at all and we were defending as a unit. The result was defensive solidity, and a short streak of good form. Things have, of course, gone horribly hay-wire since. One can only imagine then, that something has gone wrong at the top. The rumours of the apparent rift between Wenger and Bould strangely coincided with the team’s dip in form as well. Players aren’t playing for one another anymore, and an example of this would be how Podolski doesn’t defend as much as he used to before. Might it be that Bould isn’t being given room to exact his influence on the squad as much as he did before? Sadly, we can do no more than to speculate.

We miss our Arsenal, we want our Arsenal back Le Prof.