Arsenal have exited the Christmas and New Year period having extended their lead at the top of the Premier League to six points.
Not that you’d think that given some of the noise being made around the club since our 0-0 draw at home to Liverpool on Thursday. I suppose it was inevitable really, given how much time I spent last time out on winning goals which turned out not to be.
You, me and everyone connected to Arsenal Football Club have been subjected to an analysis of the game painting Arsenal as cowards and, in one player’s case, idiotic. On the other hand, brave Liverpool Football Club, with all their forwards missing, came and played us off our own pitch.
I didn’t get to see much of the post-match analysis on the night as I was making my way across London having first played football in some of that torrential rain and then watched the game at my mate Steve’s. It struck me though, that the second half, when it felt like Liverpool kept the ball for about half an hour non-stop, was very reminiscent of a home game against Spurs two seasons back. We had just played our first Champions League game after years away and, after a strong first half, just seemed to run out of legs in a second half completely controlled by the visitors.
And then I realised there is an even more recent parallel. This came on the opening day of the season as Manchester United hit diagonal balls into space and kept turning us around. Yes, they did it in a different style to how Liverpool went about their keep ball, but one thing was the same. In playing with a false nine, they were able to control the football (or at least keep us from controlling it) – but at an almost total cost to their attacking threat.
For all of Jeremie Frimpong’s sorties down the right, the closest Liverpool came to scoring was a Szoboszlai freekick in the second half. Weirdly, this happened just minutes after he took another free kick in what looked to be an identical position from which he had scored the winner in August. He couldn’t again, could he?
No.
Anyway. I’m not here to tell you you’re wrong to be disappointed by our performance on Thursday night. It’s a curious thing this season that even as we seem ever closer to our goal of bringing the Premier League trophy back to North London for the first time since 2004, we have seemed a little less certain of ourselves in the big games. In fact, I saw one Bluesky user, I won’t embarrass by naming him, opine that this was the worst Arsenal game he’d ever been to.
I’m pretty sure it wasn’t even the worst Arsenal game of the last 5 years.
I get it, we had the chance to go 8 points clear and make a big statement against the Premier League champions and, I think because we feel close to something, spurning this chance feels especially acute. But if someone had said to you after we’d lost at Villa Park on 6 December, you’re going to take 16 points from your next 6 games and be six points clear of everyone else, well you’d have signed for that without thinking twice, no?
Obviously.
We’re gonna need to keep our composure over the next few weeks and months, we also need to stick together. There’s plenty enough sniping from outside, as evidenced by the unedifying conclusion to Thursday night’s game. Obviously, it’s horrible that Connor Bradley got so seriously injured and it wasn’t a good look for Gabriel Martinelli to attempt push him off the pitch. I know some have defended Martinelli on that specific point as Bradley had rolled back onto the pitch, presumably attempting to get the game stopped. I don’t know, I tend to think if you are seriously injured, you probably get a pass whatever you’re doing.
But it seems teeth grindingly obvious that Gabriel Martinelli had no idea how badly hurt Bradley was, especially in a climate where players generally don’t need an invite to suck grass. Full credit to Arne Slot, by the way, for pointing this out. And so, whilst I can live with Manchester United fans like my mate Nugget calling Martinelli a “c__t” (yes, I did pull him up), I also tend to think the people who are paid vast sums of money to act as professional broadcasters should try and be, um, professional about it.
You know, I’m old enough to remember all those trips to Old Trafford, when they realised in 2002 they couldn’t live with us in a football match, but refs would allow them to kick the crap out of us for as long as they needed to. And so that’s what they did for like the next 3 years. To listen, then, to Gary Neville advocating violence on a professional footballer (to be fair, I guess not entirely out of character for him) and then have to endure Roy Keane pontificating about it in the studio afterwards – I think irony just gave up and died in the corner over there.
Despite Mikel Arteta having donned his Sunday Best in front of the media, pretty much ever since the Newcastle “desgracia” a couple of years back, pundits and fans remain in a terrible rush to paint Arsenal, and Arteta in particular, in the colours of Captain Black. I don’t really get it. I mean, obviously I can see the physical resemblance, but to me, whenever the boss speaks, I hear someone who wants his team to do well and always fronts up on the – increasingly rare – occasion they haven’t. And yet, some of my Leeds mates are still going on about an answer he gave to a specific question about a football one year ago.
I think the phrase is “rent free”.
It’s getting so bad, I’m starting to worry that this Chelsea team, somehow one of their more hateful iterations – which is saying something – will somehow begin this week’s Carabao Cup semi final as the people’s champions. Imagine!
Anyway, on Sunday at Portsmouth, Gabriel Martinelli showed he is made of the right stuff and responded to all the hysteria, as well as constant booing from the Pompey crowd (you guys have changed, man!) with his first senior hat trick. Yes, it was Championship opposition, so nobody’s getting too carried away about it and I’m not going to dwell on it long here, but it was a swift and very effective two fingers to the likes of Neville and Keane. We all know what would have been said had Martinelli turned in an anonymous performance this weekend, so to see him literally front and centre was welcome indeed.
Incidentally, how many heads do you think exploded on hate watches across the world as Arsenal had the temerity to eliminate a Championship side from the FA Cup via two corners, a quickly taken free kick and the classic corner/own goal combo?
I thought Mikel Merino and Ethan Nwaneri turned in excellent performances behind the Brazilian, combining together well and Nwaneri showing the drive and ability on the ball that, basically, means we’d all like to see a bit more of him in the first team. It’d be good to see him given an opportunity at the Bridge, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see how Mikel feels about that.
Finally for today, did you catch any of Spurs’ latest home defeat, with Aston Villa knocking them out of the FA Cup at the weekend? I happened to turn it on just after half time and was struck by the dead silence emanating from the toilet bowl. Of course, it got a bit noisy around their consolation goal, but generally the atmosphere seemed, well, it seemed a bit like I remember Arsenal games around 2018.
Side note: There were definitely some home games that year the aforementioned Bluesky user would not have enjoyed.
I suppose they haven’t quite got to the half empty stadium bit yet (have they?), but the people who are in there would clearly rather be anywhere else than in the Tottenham Hotspur stadium. Difficult to blame them, I suppose, when the away fans are chanting “Thomas Frank is a Gooner” and Spurs have just lost yet another home game. It’s not my business of course, but surely only thing keeping Thomas Frank in a job today is the fact he’s only been in it 6 months – they’re not keeping him on the basis of his football philosophy, whatever it may be.