The Hampshire Gooner
Well, here we are now, more than a quarter of the way through the season which some stated would end in the club facing relegation from the Premier League. How do you think we have fared so far? For me, the season overall has been one of positivity compared with the picture that many of the doom-mongers amongst us would have painted at the beginning of the season. The gradual improvement has been there for all to see, and the poor start was almost a certainty given the late departures and arrivals that took place at the club over the summer period.
The main mistake was allowing the transfer sagas of Cesc and Samir to go on and on before the inevitable finally happened and they both left. It was obvious to all concerned that they were both on the way out, and I for one feel this situation was allowed to develop purely due to Arsène’s reluctance to accept the reality of the situation at the time. Our boss seems so certain of his own way that he fails to accept quickly enough when someone else, including his own players, gives up on the master-plan and wants out. Did he think that Flamini would leave for free a few years ago? Did he feel Samir and Cesc would both leave this summer? If the answer to these questions is a ‘no’, which it appears to be, then why is it a ‘no’?
It is one thing being confident in your own abilities and in your overall opinion of the modern-day game. It is another thing altogether to believe in your own views so adamantly that you expect modern-day footballers to turn down the opportunity to double their salaries elsewhere when they have no genuine allegiance to your club in the first place. In my opinion, if Arsène didn’t hold on to his own way being the only way so tightly, this situation would never have been allowed to develop, as both players would have been shipped out of the club in the early summer months. We would, of course, have then been left with ample time to bring in the worthwhile replacements rather than being left to scramble it out down to the wire on transfer-deadline day.
It goes without saying that the hammering we had to endure at OT before transfer-deadline day was down to this failing. If we had brought in the same players as we did on transfer-deadline day before this game took place, obviously the end-result would have had a slightly different look to it. For this, and the defeat at Blackburn shortly after the deadline passed, I blame the manager 100%.
For what has happened beyond that moment in time, you do then have to give some credit back to the man you can blame for the early season defeats. We have bought a slightly different type of player than the ones we sold during the summer, and this has seemingly brought about a much-needed change in style of play. We are older as a team now than we were last season, and that, for me, can only be a plus. Arteta’s not being an international also has to count in our favour, as right now he is sitting at home with his feet up, waiting for the Norwich game to come around, rather than travelling with the Spanish national team to Costa Rica for a meaningless friendly next week.
When you look at the run of results we have had since the derby day defeat, you must say that we have come together well as a team, and begun to gel, which would have been easy to predict after so many late signings all at the same time in August. Out of the team that faced WBA the other day, we had Jenkinson, Santos, Arteta and Gervinho who all started and were not at the club last season. Add to this number Mertesacker, who has been a regular since signing a couple of months ago, nearly half of the side has only been at the club for what is, at best, a few months. Let us also not forget that our newly-established number one between the sticks had not played any Premier League football for the club this time last year. Ramsey was also not a regular starter this time last season, having just recovered from his awful injury the season before. Koscielny is only just starting his second season in the English game and we are still without our main man in midfield due to injury (Jack not Abou).
When you factor in all of these elements that come to make up a team, it goes without saying that we were always going to struggle to kick off the new season, and the teams that played us early on got lucky, as we surely made teams like Liverpool look better than they actually are in early August. Now, after eleven games of the league campaign, you can start to see things settling down in to a more familiar-looking league table, and we can now start to predict from what we have already seen what will happen moving forward.
Too many people are talking about finishing fourth, and pre-empting that the top three, in no particular order, will be Man City, Man Utd and Chelsea. This, in my eyes, is a complete falsehood and in all likelihood will not happen this time round. If you factor in the number of points that the top seven teams have managed to amass at this stage, and who those teams have already faced, one fact stands out like a sore thumb to me. Chelsea will do very well to finish in the top four at all this season. Out of the other top-seven clubs, they have only faced us at home and United away so far. If Tottenham win their game in hand (at home to Everton), which seems more than likely, they will be three points clear of the Blues. Tottenham have played Newcastle and United away and have already faced Arsenal, Liverpool and Man City at home. They are not in the Champions League and put out reserve-team sides in the Europa League, and they are also already out of the League Cup. What position would you rather be in right now, Chelsea’s or Tottenham’s? I have read in recent articles on this website that Tottenham will fall away as the season goes on. Sadly, in reality, there are no genuine reasons to expect this to be the case.
If you look at the seasons gone by in recent times, the number of points per game that you would have to obtain in order to qualify for the Champions League would be around 1.7 each season. Currently, we are averaging 1.73 and are in seventh position. This would strongly suggest that teams like Newcastle will fall away and the overall number of points gained by the top four will decrease as the season goes on. I personally do not expect to see Tottenham falling away tamely though, when taking into account the above-mentioned factors. I can even foresee a scenario where we could easily finish below our neighbours for the first time in what feels like centuries, but still manage to get into the top four ourselves, as - for me -Liverpool and Chelsea look more vulnerable, as things stand.
Another interesting fact so far for me this season has been the massive difference in style that teams have adopted when playing against us in recent weeks. In particular the Chelsea away-game made this point stand out for me. In years gone by, teams like Chelsea and Man Utd would have played a very tight defensive game against us, and picked us off on the break. This style was, in my eyes, originally born out of some kind of fear/respect for the firepower we then possessed. As the big name players have slowly left the club, and we have endured some poor results earlier on in the season, it seems like the level of fear/respect has lowered in terms of the way other competitors view us as a threat. Chelsea in effect tried for the first time in a long while to play us at our own game and failed miserably. It was almost like a game of basketball at times, and, overall, we came out winning 5-3. That simply would never have happened a few seasons ago at the Bridge. In a perverse kind of way, can the early season beatings that we endured come to help us as this season develops, as other teams fear us less and possibly leave themselves slightly more open at the back against us as a result?
If you look closer at the Tottenham away-game for example, if we played them now would the outcome be the same? We didn’t have any centre-halves to go with Mertesacker, who himself was only just getting used to the English game, so we had to go in with Song at centre-half and Coquelin in midfield. The game was again an open one, and we did manage to dominate the game for large spells. In the end, we were pretty unlucky to come away as 2-1 losers due to something of a freak winner. As bad as this may sound to some fellow gooners, if we can manage to match our North London rivals this season in the league, it might not turn out to be such a bad overall performance as you would be forgiven for originally thinking.
When looking at the other top clubs’ performances and fixtures, it also stands out that City have only played United and Spurs so far out of all the top seven clubs. Even though they have dealt with both of those games with considerable ease, it does not necessarily mean that the title is already in the bag. There is room for a considerable nosedive in their points-to- game ratio, especially when you factor in that this is their first go at combining the Champions League with trying to win the Premier League title.
Looking closer to home, so far out of the top seven we have played Liverpool only at home and have already faced United, Chelsea, Tottenham and Newcastle away. The only team that we are still to face out of the top seven is City and we play them away before Christmas. So, in theory, come the turn of the year the toughest game we should be left to face is Liverpool away. When you take into account the way we allowed the season to start, let’s face it: as a club, we were quite simply not ready. With an average points-to-game ratio that is already above what has been required on average over the past five seasons to gain a Champions League spot, is that really a bad position to be in? We are also top of our Champions League group, when a lot of so-called pundits had us down to be finishing third at best. And we’re still in the League Cup with another home tie to come in the quarter-finals.
All in all, fellow goners, this represents the kind of start to the season that was under the circumstances as good as it was ever going to be. With the big bonus of Jack hopefully coming back into the fray at some stage in the second half of the season, and with the games we will have left at that stage, you could be forgiven for looking even higher than a possible fourth-place finish.
One final footnote to the WBA game: I found myself in the unusual position of sitting in club level, and when I took to my seat for the game I noticed that I was sat next to Gary Lewin and his wife. To all of you who don’t know who I am talking about, Gary was the first-team physio for a long time, going all the way back to the eighties, before his brother took over the role not so long ago. I first off assumed that he was there as some kind of support-type role for his brother. As the game started, I began to realise that, in actual fact, Gary was there quite simply out his love for all things Arsenal, as you wouldn’t have met a more involved fan inside the ground all day long. The guy came across as an avid goner, and he certainly was affected just as badly by every misplaced Theo cross as I was. Can you imagine Mr Nasri or Mr Adebayor turning up in a few years time and watching a game like that and kicking every ball like a true Arsenal fan? True gooner.
