John Evans
I thought it was a very solid looking performance on Saturday. Could not have had more of a one sided affair. Onwards and upwards is how I would describe our season. One thing that does seem to have changed over the past 24 months or so is our ability to respond to a poor result. We have had some this season and they have been complete stinkers that is for sure. I remember coming out of the stadium after the defeat to WBA thinking that anyone who believes this side could win the Premier League trophy must need a visit to the local GP on Monday morning but to be honest I have been more than impressed with the way the side has responded every time they have let us down so far this season.
We will have more let downs to come, that is the way football is but if we continue to respond in the right way then we are well on our way to becoming the kind of successful side we all want to see. When we lost to Spurs earlier on in the season if someone had have given us the position we currently sit in I would have taken it with glee. To be sat two points behind United having played a game more with the run of games that both clubs face over the next three months I would put us as favourites right now. Anyone that thinks that is a bit over the top please take a look at the upcoming fixtures between now and the middle of April and to be honest I would probably expand that until the end of the season.
I can see us overcoming Ipswich tonight and progressing to the League Cup final which will mean the away league game with Spurs will have to re-scheduled for nearer the end of the season. Most of our hardest games of the season are behind us and we also have a healthy run of mainly home matches against inferior opposition from now until mid-April. I am not overhyping things at all to say that unless we at the bare minimum go very close to winning the Premier League title this season things would have been a complete flop as that is the bare minimum we should expect from here on in.
I predicted a long time ago that we had very little to fear from the current champions Chelsea and I also have stated my feeling that we will lift more than one trophy this season. There is plainly nothing to make me doubt those statements. Sure United will probably extend their lead to five points at Blackpool and everyone will then say game over blah blah blah but anyone that can read a fixture list and see who we have still to play and who our main rivals still have to play would probably admit that a five point head start is far from game over.
All of the negative people will no doubt read this article and say well what about the centre back situation, what about the keeper situation, what happens if RVP gets injured etc but what the doom mongers fail to realise is the simple fact that all the above listed problems have been the case for the first half of the season and we are where we are now. TV has been out all season long, Cesc has been missing for large spells and RVP is only just hitting top form after being out for most of the season. We had Almunia in goal for the first part of the season who has to be a worst option than either of the Poles we choose from now and yet we are two points off the top with our hardest games already done and dusted.
Make no mistake this is a massive opportunity for the current squad to break down walls and get into the habit of becoming a team that wins things on a regular basis and if we can manage to break through over the coming months you would have to predict us being around for some time to come based on the average age of this Arsenal side. And it would have been achieved whilst forging more of a British core to the squad (Wilshere, Walcott, Gibbs, Ramsey etc) with only minimal outlays on playing staff compared to the annual turnover of the club.
Yes people can turn around and say maybe things would have been sped up a little had we splashed a little more cash at certain times over the past four to five seasons but would it have come about and meant as much if we had gone a different route and bought success? I think not, how sweet would it be to be able to turn round to United, Chelsea, City or Spurs supporters and say we are more successful than you on a tiny percentage of the budget you have? That has to be far more satisfying than simply doing the same things as them and getting lucky every now and again with a good player which is what Spurs have done for the past five years in my eyes. Buy buy buy and sell sell sell and one day out of the millions of players that come through the gates one or two must be pretty useful. How many Dean Richards have been bought for every Van Der Vaart? By the way those two players cost them the same money.
Let us be proud of the way our club has gone over recent seasons, let us now rid ourselves of this horrible inferiority complex we seem to have developed in recent seasons as we have seen others claim trophies we have previously won on a regular basis. Let’s help the side push through those barriers over the coming months with top quality support from the stands as it can make the difference between a team getting over the line or not. Frustration and angst does transfer itself onto the pitch at our stadium, so we have to make it better for the team we support and not worse.
Bring on Ipswich, Huddersfield and then let us enjoy the games with Barcelona and see how far we have come over the past 12 months or so. Who knows we may surprise ourselves and win!
