The Premier League title is now in Arsenal hands only, win our next six games and we enter footballing nirvana. It seems only fair, therefore, to ask you, how’s your ticker?
There is nowhere else we can possibly start today other than with Arsenal’s win away at Brighton and Hove Cry Babies on Wednesday evening. A result which, combined with Manchester City’s 2-2 draw at home to Nottingham Forest, has seen us “spread the game” to borrow a phrase from national treasure and Arsenal fan, Bradley Walsh.
Seven points the gap now, albeit City with that game in hand, just eight nerve shredders left to go.
The Premier League title is now in Arsenal hands only, win our next six games and we enter footballing nirvana. It seems only fair, therefore, to ask you, how’s your ticker?
I have to be honest and say that if it’s going to be like this for the rest of the season (and, between you and me, I think it probably is), I’m very glad to be clear of the blood pressure issues which first surfaced for me around four years ago. As it was yesterday, I spent the second half of the game, watching my heart rate climb to twice its normal resting rate as the minutes ticked by. The updates from Manchester weren’t exactly helpful!
As unhealthy as I felt by the end of the game, though, that appears to be nothing compared to how Brighton’s manager, Fabian Hurzeler seemed to feel. Agitated during the game to the point Piero Hincapie had to tell him to “shushhhhh now”, he muttered darkly about Arsenal creating their own rules afterwards and, finally, when pressed talked about how David Raya had gone down three times in the game as if David Raya was the first player in Premier League history to try and manage the game a little.
Oh wait, no, that’s not right, is it?
Did you see the Brighton players who stood in front of our free kicks when we wanted to take them quickly? Or the Brighton players, like Mitoma, who tried to stop Raya releasing ball quickly to get us away on the counter attack. Much like the Chelsea players who kept on doing it on Sunday. Did you see the Brighton players trying, again, to get Arsenal players booked by lamping their own free kicks in the general direction of Arsenal players, but somehow hitting their own instead? With my own eyes, I watched a Brighton player jump into Viktor Gyokeres, fall over and, somehow, win a free kick
I think if you want to throw stones, as Hurzeler did, you better make damn sure you’re not living in a glasshouse. Mikel Arteta’s “What a surprise!” reaction to these comments tells its own story and I love that, short thrift, response from the gaffer.
I mean, I don’t remember Hurzeler having too many complaints last season when one of his players whacked the ball 50 yards across the Emirates and didn’t get booked (and went onto score an equalising goal) and Declan Rice nudged the ball a couple of yards and did – and therefore got sent off. Or when he got one of the softest penalties you’ve ever seen in your life in the return fixture.
As it was, for a team that tried to “play all the football”, his Brighton team didn’t do a very good job of it. Three shots on target the sum of their endeavours and, aside from a monumental aberration from David Raya early in the game which left the monumental Gabriel heading away Baleba’s goalbound chip, absolutely nothing to write home about.
I can explain Hurzeler’s complaints though. I’ve been learning German on Duolingo (don’t ask) and can tell you that FabianHurzeler is one of those whacky German compound words which means “That miserable f**king man!”, so let’s leave him where he is and enjoy what was – in the end – a really good defensive performance, led by Gabriel and, I think, the best game so far of Piero Hincapie’s burgeoning Arsenal career.
One of the curiosities of Brighton’s approach where they tried and largely succeeded in pinning us in, especially in the opening period, by going man to man was that they were then unable to double up on Bukayo Saka as has now become habitual.
This meant that when Jurrien Timber came down the right early on in the game and got the ball to Bukayo, the England winger was able to get down the line before coming in into that space at the edge of the box where we have been so used to him causing carnage. Carnage he caused as his curled effort took a nick on the way through to the keeper and found its way in off the keeper’s heel.
What a way to celebrate your 300th appearance for the club hey?
Two goals in five games is not exactly wonderland for our end product machine, but having gone through – by his standards – an incredibly fallow period through December to February, our England international may be sparking back to life at just the right time.
Did I enjoy the fact that, having seen Arsenal concede what feels like an avalanche of worldies this season, our winning goal game from a shot with an apparent xG value of 0.2?
Yes, yes, I did.
I guess you could say fortune favoured the brave. Hopefully this encourages our main man to be a bit more aggressive with his choices as we – haha – go forward.
Going forward, one thing seemed clear out of Wednesday night. We’ll have a much better chance of achieving what we all want, if we have what TNT comms referred to as the “culture of Kai Havertz” available to us on the regular. The control he gave us enabled us to see out what had been a very difficult game with a minimum of fuss, it’s great to have him back.
Those of who read me regularly (there are a few of you, right?) might remember my “Commentary Terrorist” piece from last month and it came to mind, again, as I was listening to Gary Neville desperately trying to wish Liam Delap’s last kick of the game equaliser that wasn’t on Sunday into legality.
It was so weird to hear Neville talking about one of the clearer offside decisions we’ve seen at a football ground of late as if it might be overturned on VAR. He knew it was no good, he just didn’t want the watching public to know.
And speaking of that game, wasn’t it funny – so, so funny – to hear our corners being talked about, again, as if they are the scourge of modern football and we must do something to eradicate and won’t somebody think of the children?
For God’s sake.
I will be the first to admit that we are not always easy on the eye. I will go further and say I don’t think we played particularly well on Sunday. But Sunday was also the first time we have scored goals from set pieces since Leeds away, which was a game that took place as recently as… January. So we hear nothing about the evil that corners are in that time and then the second we put one in the back of the net, WON’T SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING TO STOP THEM?
How about you highly paid Premier League managers get better at coaching your players to stop them? How about that? Because as long as Arsenal have players like Bukayo Saka and Declan Rice and can deliver the ball exactly as it needs to be, we’re obviously going to keep doing it.
Shout out to Deccers by the way, it can’t be too often you get to mug Chelsea fans en masse off twice in the space of a few weeks, but he managed to do it.
And, as a kid raised on a healthy diet of George Graham and the Adams – Bould near post flick on who grew into an adult who really hated watching us lose to Stoke because we were incapable of defending throw ins, I think we should absolutely keep doing it. I love it, love that everyone else hates it and will make no apology to anyone for that.
All this way down and we’ve only just got to Spurs plummeting towards relegation. I know you don’t really care about them, but I have a question to leave you with:
If you build a 62, 850 (yes, if you didn’t know, it’s bigger than Arsenal’s) seat stadium and there’s nobody in it to watch the football, does it even really exist?