Gunnerrific

I can’t believe how many news stories I’ve seen over the past couple of days analyzing Arsenal. Our beloved club has become the foremost subject of scrutiny. It’s as though every journalist, analyst, and commentator has come out of the woodwork to take a sliver of Arsenal and put it under the microscope. If Arsene Wenger reads the news like the rest of his he must be feeling a bit overwhelmed for a manager that has managed to finish third in the English Premier League (or so we assume at this point).

Is this all deserved?

Wenger Overhwlemed Much?

I don’t think it is. Yes, we should all be talking about Arsenal. Yes, we should all be critical of Arsenal. But no, we should not talk as though the club is ending as we know it… or that Wenger needs to be let go… or that huge drastic changes must happen immediately… it’s just too easy to try and sensationalize the situation we are in. I will not play into the histrionics, but merely laugh at it. I bet Arsene Wenger is doing the same. I imagine him to be daydreaming about responding to all of this with just one long, drawn out, Frenchly accented, “Uhhhhhhhhhhh…”

Rumors today swell about Arsenal making a bid for City keeper Joe Hart. The part of the article I love the most is “A fifth consecutive year without a trophy…”. Great. Because we need more reminders of that, and using that sort of statistic is pretty ridiculous. Am I wrong here? I mean, it’s not like there are 10 trophies handed out every year to all the different teams… it’s hard to win a trophy. And for each competition, there is only one winner. Sure, given our history, we are expected to be winning some silverware. But at the same time, a dry spell for five years surely can’t be used as a statistic in every single case one makes. If that’s the case, let’s start talking about United and Chelsea as the teams that ‘have never had an unbeaten season’.

There’s not too much news today ahead of the Manchester City match. Bayern beat Lyon. Inter surprised Barcelona. Frankly, I hope Barca come back to win it. It would look better on us.

Well that didn’t go too well. The stars and planets have aligned and Tottenham’s “once every 11 year win-at-home against Arsenal” was apparently due. The game was pretty one sided except for the 2 goals Tottenham managed to produce. Arsenal maintained 66% of ball possession and pulled off 8 more shots on goal, although only 1 of those was actually, you know, on goal.

Words really can not describe how tingly I felt inside to see Robin Van Persie on the pitch. When he cam on, the game instantly changed. Given that he only played for a bit, he produced some wonderful changes, played well, and seems to be his old self. As usual I will keep my fingers crossed that he comes back with a vengeance.

What Arsene Wenger had to say after the match.

Arsene Wenger said before the match that if we didn’t win the chance to win the title was over, and I have to agree. Given the amount of injuries we have sustained it would be unrealistic to assume that we can win every game for the rest of the season. In addition, both Manchester and Chelsea need to drop points, which is just as unlikely.

To top it all off, Vermaelen was injured early on and is expected to be out for 3 weeks. Great. Someone really does need to do some investigation into what our players are eating and/or drinking. Just as someone comes back from injury, someone else goes out. This has happened regularly every season and I think it is probably our most significant issue. We are just too susceptible to injuries that cause multiple week-long absences.

Our season has just deflated with the same sound a large, uninspiring, two-day old birthday balloon produces. Pfffffffffffffffffffft.

*Photo courtesy user Gordonflood.com on Flickr via CC w/attribution license.

So I haven’t written a post in what is pretty much forever in blog years. I thought I would head things off before it got out of hand and I really hit the 1 year mark. Don’t insult me too much, but don’t disappoint me either.

The season has ended in a rather spectacular fashion. We bombed out of the Champion’s League in a nightmare match against a team we know really well, and we are barely scraping by with yet another fourth place league finish. I am really frustrated with this. We are an amazing team and have some good players, but I shouldn’t be that upset… back at the start of the season I had a feeling we were in for this again.

We really didn’t make any significant signings last summer, and we have no real veterans on our team that are well established. I have been, and will continue to be, on the same page with Mr. Wenger when it comes to the notion of breeding young talent into exactly what you want. However, that’s not going to work if you don’t have any all-stars on your team. The closest players we have to that are all players that have gotten their start at Arsenal. I don’t have any faith in a squad that has finished fourth for this many seasons AND has a manager that continually says the team is strong, and he doesn’t need to buy players.

That’s right… Arsene just proclaimed, again, that he won’t be buying any players and that his squad is strong enough. I know of no better example of a broken record. In other shocking news, Dick Cheney disagrees with Obama’s policies and Andy Samberg makes funny music videos that people feel the need to share with each other, over and over again. Now I’m really worried, because he can’t keep saying this every season and expect the board to be happy with it. Maybe if he finally said that 4th place is pretty good, and that finishing there is higher than 16 other teams is also pretty good, it’d be easier to swallow the same medicine. Otherwise, the board simply can’t tolerate this forever.

Anyways, I’m beating a dead horse. I would like to see Arsenal spend a boatload of cash this summer on a boatload of really good players. I think that sums it up.