All of you know what game is coming up on the weekend; if you don’t, sorry but you don’t care about the club enough. This weekend sees the clash people look for every single season- Manchester United vs Arsenal. Fergie vs Wenger, Fabregas vs Rooney, Adebayor vs Ferdinand; there are a lot of contests to be played all over the pitch, and if we come out the better in most of them we will win the game. I don’t have the time to go in depth for this; you can read my detailed analysis of the pre-game talk here but I’m sure it will be a cracking game, like most of the ones between the sides are. Up the arse!
Nice, detailed statistics for all the geeks stattos out there:
Arsenal convinced me once again that we have the best youth team in the world. If Gilberto was taken out of the team against Sheffield United, the average age would have been 19, Gilberto took it up by two years to 21. Wenger must be thinking to himself, ‘What the hell do I do with all these bloody kids?!’. After all, not all will make it. Some will want first team football, some will be loaned, and some will stay and make it into another wonderful Arsenal team after our current generation, possibly Wenger’s third and final generation before he leaves.
As we saw last night, Eduardo scored an absolute scorcher from outside the box against a Sheffield United team struggling for form in the Championship. With 14 points from 13 games, they will either feel A. Happy they are out the cup so they can focus on the league B. The heavy defeat will depress them even more. I’m guessing it’s B as every team wants a decent run in the cup. Will we win the Carling Cup this year? We already know Wenger will play the youngsters even if we play Man United or Chelsea in the final. Why shouldn’t he? They have proved critics wrong time after time. Keiran Gibbs, the former Wimbledon trainee, looked immense as a full back, Eduardo was causing havock and Gilberto looked assured as ever in defence.
That begs the question… where would our young Carling Cup team finish in the league? Would they finish in the top 6? How about top 10? Or would they be relegation battlers? The team was:
That is a decent team. It would not finish top 6, or even top 8, they are still too lightweight to make a big impact in the league. However, they would be able to finish in the top 10. For Arsenal’s youth/reserve team to be able to do that is incredible. 2 weeks ago we saw Man Utd’s youth/reserve team get humiliated by Coventry at home. We beat Sheffield United away. We go into Saturday with only 2 players injured, Man Utd have just lost Scholes for 3 months. It’s good news for us.
I remember during our unbeaten season, we were playing Middlesborough at home when we suddenly went 3-1 down in our 42nd match unbeaten. My friend Steve (who is a Man Utd fan) said to me, ‘You bastards have your second string out (we had injuries at the time) but they are still the second best team in the league’. I paused for a moment and thought to myself, ‘he’s actually spot on for once… our second string would finish second in the league’. It always opens my eyes and amazes me when I think back to that moment; to have a reserve team strong enough to be able to finish 2nd in the league is something no team nowadays have. Chelsea can’t even hold that sentiment. Their 2nd team is good, but at the time we were unbeaten we played football that left defence’s puzzled and opposition in distress.
Enough of Arsenal and how good we are. We all know we are amazing at the moment. Amazing enough for Fergie to say we are the ‘real threat to Man Utd this season’. It’s always nice to hear our name mentioned in that manner by a respectable status like Fergie, but we don’t want that. We don’t want people realising we are good. We want people writing us off because Arsenal play best when underdogs. As I heard the story on SSN (I was sat in my living room eating cereal), what seemed to be a harmless outburst led to my other half walking out:
Me: ‘Oh feck off Fergie, stop playing mind games’
Missus: ‘Why are you so rude to him? He’s just praised Arsenal’
Me: ‘Yes he has darling‘ I said, ‘but it’s all mind games. We’ve seen it before and we’ll see it again, he is a dirty bastard who will use any physocological means to gain advantage over us’.
She sighed and as she was walking out the room, I heard her mutter ‘Bloody hell it’s only football’. I muttered to myself ‘Yeah you’re right, it’s only football, but this only football gives me more enjoyment than a night in bed with you!’. Thank fuck she didn’t hear that or else I would have been executed at first instance.
“Are Arsenal as good as people say they are? You’d better believe it, I thought they had 12 men out there!”
However, Arsenal don’t need other teams praising them. Why? Because when other teams realise Arsenal are a threat, they up their game and give Arsenal a tougher match than what they normally would. We want them to keep writing us off, keep saying we are nothing and keep saying ‘kids can’t win nothing’.
Arsenal have improved their fitness levels and are working harder in matches, thus we are tiring our opponents. Carragher after 80 minutes was shattered, Fabregas after 80 minutes was running like he was Haile Gebreselassie running the London marathon; he was full of energy. Carragher was good, but not man of the match; Hleb deserves that award. Hleb was skillfull, clever and classy against Liverpool. Yesterdayhe performed better than Pires has ever performed against Liverpool. Who is better, Rosicky or Hleb? I don’t know. And I don’t want to know because both are tremendous players when on form. I want both to be amazing. I have a soft spot for Rosicky because at WC 2006 he showed he is world class. When he scored those 2 scorchers against USA, it suprised me and excited me. He is our Little Mozart and I like him. A lot. A hell of a lot.
Arsenal walked away from Anfield in a better overall position than Liverpool, because we came out with a draw and 11 fit players on the pitch. Liverpool came out with 1 win in 5 home games, and even worse, 3 key players injured. Rafa did not want this. It will kill him inside. The pressure is on him more than ever, he rushed Torres back; Torres was not fit and needed another 2 weeks to gain full fitness. Rafa wanted to use his pace. It backfired.
Meanwhile, Wenger has been forced to say something he didn’t want to say:
“We have the talent to fight up there for the championship.”
This made the media go mad. This made them put out headlines such as ‘Wenger: We Can Win The League’. This is not what he said, we all know he did not say what the media wanted him to say. The media wanted him to say ‘Of course we can win the league, we are on form and Liverpool were shit tonight’ - of course in a more professional manner -, but Wenger was clever enough to imply we are good enough to win the league without directly saying it. The media wants Wenger to say it. Fergie wants Wenger to say it. Everyone wants Wenger to say it. But Wenger will not. Wenger will not say ‘my young team is better than the other teams so piss off!‘. We don’t need to psychologically gain an advantage over our rivals like Fergie always needs or Jose always needed.
Arsenals good form continues. Our momentum has kept going. Our real test is against Man Utd where two on form teams go head to head, just like it was on the 24th October 2004 where our unbeaten run came to an end. This game will be good. Tevez wants to score, Rooney wants to score, Ronaldo wants to score. Fabregas will be outstanding in this game, Almunia will be good and Adebayor will score. He always does against Man Utd.
Shall I predict? Or shall I not? I will predict the Man Utd score nearer the game. Shakespeare once said:
‘The Game Of Art Is Not Whether One Can Overcome Fear; But Overcome Pressure’
In this instant, football is the art, our fear was Henry leaving and Arsenal crumbling, and so far we have overcome the pressures of having a young team. I’ll leave you to think about that.
Alright, so I was a tad cocky before the game, talking about maulings and such like; feel free to slate me in the below post. We managed a draw at Anfield, which is hardly a poor feat, especially after going behind to a Stevie G free kick. We dominated the match and apart from one or two sticky moments outplayed them on their home ground; this team is definitely shaping up well for next week’s game. Cesc Fabregas was the hero after a toe poke past Pepe Reina, and the young Spaniard is fast developing into the best midfielder in world football
Anyways, the goals for all those that haven’t seen them:
Fabregas also hit the post with a stunning strike, as did Eboue; what was excellent though was this young team’s ability to come back from a negative situation. I’m a lot more positive about this, and I think most Gooners are too, but here it is- Arsenal are going to win the league this season, and they’re going to do it in f**kin’ style.
Anyways, feel free to get pissed celebrate the result as you like
