Hello.
We have had the reality smashed right into our faces once more, in HD for some of you and live for a few more who were at the game, following an absurd defeat to the neighbours in arguably the biggest north London derby ever.
That man Gareth Bale beat the offside trap to give the home side a 37th minute lead before Aaron Lennon made it 2-0 in almost identical fashion as Bale did two minutes earlier. It was a quickfire double blow to us as we until those minutes had slightly dominated and probably should have opened scoring but Olivier Giroud felt otherwise.
Per Mertesacker, with a little help of Bale’s head on the way, did head us back into the game six minutes into the second half. Afterwards both sides had chances to score more, with Bale, Jermain Defoe and Gylfi Sigurdsson missing for Sp*ds while Theo Walcott and Aaron Ramsey came close for us.
The Sillywhites held on for a painfully deserved derby win and return to third place on 54 points, seven points clear of us in fifth place with 10 matches left to play.
Now, Wenger has to be the only specie in Milky Way that would deem it proper to bring on the right players for the wrong ones, topping that by keeping the worst player on… and sealing the whole conundrum package by making Ramsey right back and Mertesacker centreforward (the latter desperately inadvertently). I’ll get to all that later.
First, this was the sort of match Szczesny should have been a spectator and really, he only had one save of note to make while coming way out to concede a throw-in another time. Alas he had a pair of error prone central defenders ahead of him who made a shamble of their high-line nonsense all game, a play from them that cost us the points.
It is frustrating that both goals came within minutes of each other, which left me wondering how one manages to commit same error twice in as many minutes? Only at Arsenal can a deja vu of stupidity happen, only at Arsenal.
For the first Vermaelen actually left Bale, who was played onside by Mertesacker, and chose to attempt an interception of the pass Bale latched on to. We all know how that played out.
For the second, Vermaelen and Mertesacker went high-line mode again with Adebayor in their sight but there came Lennon behind them to cut inside Monreal, receive the pass and score.
Remember the source of Ramsey’s yellow card? He made a professional foul on Lennon. Monreal should have done same instead of letting him just go past, as getting yellow would certainly have been better than having us go into the break two goals down.
Worse still that moronic high-line error was made all game, with a ball in just ahead of Bale early in the first period while in the second half Moussa Dembele decided to pass out left when Bale had a galaxy to run into out right having run off Vermaelen’s shoulder, yet again.
Even then, the ball still got to Bale but he thankfully had a rugby moment. But the worst, heart-in-mouth moment was when Sigurdsson was played through on goal and with only Szczesny to beat, he rather oddly decided to pass instead of shoot.
On our part, the midfield did a lot of closing down and ball winning but unfortunately it was times when they lost possession and failed to close down that both goals happen. That’s what happens when you let you guard down even for a moment.
Midfield however cannot be faulted for having Giroud upfront. Indeed we dominated the opening exchanges, a rarity in our recent ‘big games’, but the Frenchman, as he has lately, simply modelled our jersey and didn’t play his footballing role.
How he lasted all 90 minutes and six in a game I didn’t even want him to start bullies and defeats my better reasoning… bringing us to the conundrum from earlier.
Why take off a right back who was pulling a decent shift and redeploy Ramsey, a central midfielder, already on a yellow, to play right back? Killed the buzz that should have come with Rosicky’s introduction for Jenkinson. It was the right substitution for the absolutely wrong player.
If I’d done yesterday evening’s ratings, Ramsey wouldn’t get a score. Not because he didn’t play well but it would have felt unfair rating a player who starts a match in midfield and ends it playing right back.
Same player who’s also been played as left and right winger and we expect to see the best of his abilities? It’s hardly possible to be deployed out of position so many times in a season and not have your game unsettled, but… Wenger knows best.
The manager would go right ahead to leave me beyond nonplussed soon after by taking off Arteta for Podolski, leaving Giroud on to remain handsomely dormant. Which is proof that Wenger is the kind of person who will call… no, who will insist on a gynaecologist to treat an aching tooth.
Then a stubborn brigade, stubborn as the manager they blindly support with foolish delusional arguments, will still go about preaching of past glories rather than calling (and hoping to Bergkamp) for the present cancerous state of the club to be sorted so the club can have a great future to look forward to. A future with trophies or would we rather the club was rich yet hapless as QPR is?
Only David Moyes comes to mind as a manager in any of Europe’s top leagues whose job remains quite secure despite not winning a trophy for so long, but is he fortunate to have half the kind of resources available to Wenger? No.
I’m fine if Wenger remains after this season really, so long he at least changes his approach towards the game – tactics, transfer policy et al – which has been tirelessly elaborated about on this and some other sites.
But he won’t. No, he would rather go into next season keeping up same system that has failed for eight seasons now and expect to succeed. May 2014 can’t come soon enough for the club. Gazidis better leave as well, my thoughts about him are too vulgar to write here.
For the moment, we’ll have to mull over this hurtful defeat, ‘move on’ as we have from similar ones all season before dealing with the return leg at Bayern Munich in what could be our last match in the European elite till at least the 2014/15 season.
I’m honestly not optimistic about that match but I am about finishing in the Premier League’s top four, however grim the prospect of doing so look at the moment, being seven points behind Sp*ds and five behind the chavs.
And with the club debunking reports of an imminent Arab money takeover by stating silent Stan is here “for long term”, a weary optimist is the least I could be concerning the club.
