Written by David Sunday, 21 March 2010 14:25

GunnerTalk Blog

By David Coral

Greetings all.

Usually after a two nil win at home to a struggling side, you would say that the result was a comfortable one. This certainly wasn’t the case yesterday as The Arsenal overcame a numerical disadvantage for the majority of the match, as well as some nervy moments and typically horrendous English weather in the second half.

After five minutes it looked as though the game was going to be a walk in the park, with Arsenal dominating possession and scoring through Denilson, who finished sweetly after some neat hold-up play from Bendtner. Funny that these two should combine for the goal, given that the last time we saw them it was Denilson’s speculative effort and Bendtner’s sharpness that won us the game in the closing moments at Hull. To be honest I’m not a particularly big fan of Denilson, especially away from home where I just don’t think he’s got the bottle for a scrap at this early point of his career. That said, it is entirely possible that without his two recent key contributions, we would be effectively out of this title race. As it is we are top by a point and can show passionate and vociferous support for Liverpool and Blackburn tomorrow, which will be easy anyway due to the class of their football, likeability of their managers and the very definite sense that their players are genuinely decent and selfless individuals who would help old ladies cross the road and rescue cats stuck up trees... Or perhaps not.

After the first goal, we looked to press on and played some awesome stuff at times, with Nasri and Fabregas missing good chances to extend the lead. It’s interesting that Eboué has been preferred over Sagna recently and he put in another decent performance yesterday. He’s clearly a confidence player, as opposed to the calm, steady and consistent Sagna, but while Eboué is playing like this (with the confidence that has previously eluded him) he is hard to leave out. He is more like the Eboué that arrived at Arsenal and had a brilliant season at right back than the one who looked lost in midfield and short on confidence over the last couple of seasons. Whatever the reason, he’s one of our most improved this year and it’s nice to see.

Another one who’s improved drastically over the past year or so is Alex Song, who played brilliantly yesterday in two different positions. During the first half he was fantastic; first to every loose ball, breaking down opposition attacks all over the park and turning them into attacks of our own with some fine passing. He keeps things simple, which is an underrated quality, especially in this side which, as we all know, has a tendency to overplay at times. He hardly missed a beat when he joined the back four and his defensive versatility is surely going to be needed in the coming weeks and months considering we’re facing the attacking talents of Man City, Spurs and Barcelona twice (who also happen to share a talent for being cunts- funny).

Anyway, with the team playing well and half time approaching, the scene seemed set for a routine victory, with the likes of Fabregas and Arshavin to take over the game in the second half. But the gods of football don’t seem to like routine, especially when it comes to Arsenal. Thus, one of these said gods thought it would be amusing to smite the linesman with the temporary affliction of blindness just before half time. As a result, when defending the sort of lump up field you expect from a team threatened by relegation, one of the West Ham players tangled with Vermaelen and made the sort of dive that you expect from, well, any footballer. The lino bought it and suddenly we were down to 10 men and faced a penalty. Perhaps blind is a little harsh but it wasn’t a crowded penalty box and you would hope that an experienced linesman could spot a dive from the sideline- sadly not. Unfortunately the error was compounded by the facts that the incident was inside the box and that Vermaelen was the last man, automatically equating to a penalty and red card.

Manuel Almunia has hardly been a beacon of light this season and in my view I see him as fairly fortunate that the man behind him, Lukasz Fabianski, has been about as reliable as a Chelsea player’s conscience on a night out in Amsterdam. Yesterday, however, his penalty save may well have been the difference between three points and one. Just as Denilson has made a couple of crucial contributions in recent weeks, that save could be absolutely massive in terms of the title race, make no mistake about it. Had West Ham have scored, they would have been very difficult to break down in the second half with just ten men.

The second half performance was gutsy considering the circumstances, but I couldn’t help but keep thinking that we were lucky to be playing West Ham as opposed to a side with a bit more firepower about them. Even so, there were a couple of scares, including a Carlton Cole strike against the outside of the post. Eventually, however, we managed to kill the game off after some more good work by Eboué led to Fabregas chipping the ball up onto an opposition hand and slotting the ensuing penalty. I think the feeling in the ground for most of the second half was of quiet confidence that we would hold on, with just a sprinkling of nervousness because, well, we’re Arsenal.

I suppose the only real negative from the game is the loss of Vermaelen for the next two games. Birmingham away and Wolves at home shouldn’t be too tricky, but you always want your best players available, especially in the run in when you’ve got a shot at the title. Plus, the prospect of Sol Campbell playing too many consecutive games at his age is a worrying one, as is the prospect of Silvestre, umm, playing at all... In fact, if I was Arsène, I would be tempted to play Song at centre back in Vermaelen’s absence and bring in either Diaby or Rosicky to fill in the midfield. Sure, that requires players to play out of position, but when the alternative is giving Silvestre the chance to piss away all our recent good work with slips, missed tackles and losses of concentration then I’m more than happy to take the risk.

So all we need to do now is just take on each game as it comes (that sounds familiar, has anyone ever said that before?). We’ve got Birmingham, Wolves, Spurs, Wigan, Man City, Blackburn and Fulham left to play, which isn’t at all bad considering that Chelsea and United still have to play each other. Somehow, some way, we are in this title race; had you told me that would be the case a few months ago I would have laughed in your face. Winning it would be simply incredible, considering we have been written off so many times and lost both home and away to our two main rivals. It would also be a brilliant way to break our well publicized recent trophy drought and would serve as a quite beautiful “fuck you” to Chelsea, Man U and all the pricks in the media who said we were too young and inexperienced. But it’s not going to be easy and will need some serious grit and determination, lots of very good football, probably one or two last minute goals and in all likelihood a little luck if we’re going to pull it off. I don’t think it’s being unrealistic to suggest that we should win all of our remaining games and I’d say a minimum requirement would be 19 out of 21 points, because you can be sure the two teams we’re competing with aren’t going to do much worse than that. That would give us 86 points, which is quite a low total in comparison with recent years, but that’s the type of season it’s been, where the top teams have thrown away points at regular intervals. Wouldn’t we just love to be the benefactors of that, though?

If I had to predict anything it would be that the match against Tottenham will be absolutely key. Every game against those utter cunts is big, but that would be our third game of the week, coming off the back of an away trip to maybe the finest footballing side in Europe in what surely is the most hostile environment any Arsenal player will ever play in: Shite Hart Lane. Add all that to their own champions league ambitions and the game is just going to be shit scarily huge. I can just see a result there being the catalyst for a strong finish, given the mental strength it would give the players and fans. On the other hand, as if any loss to Tottenham isn’t hard enough to swallow already, that would surely be the end of our run at the title, or at least an extremely difficult loss to overcome.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here and considering only two paragraphs ago I said we should take each game as it comes we can all count ourselves lucky that I’m not managing the club (although I promise I would sell Silvestre). Next up is a trip to Birmingham on Saturday and that’s all the players should be thinking about from now until then. Things are getting very exciting- it’s nice to genuinely be in a title race with only a handful of games to go, I had almost forgotten what that felt like. So let’s support four teams for the rest of the season: the mighty Arsenal, whoever is playing against United and Chelsea (as hard as that may be) and, as usual, whoever is playing against Tottenham... Because Tottenham are cunts... Great big dirty ‘orrible cunts. What a nice way to finish...

‘Til next time...