An Arsenal blog from a coach’s perspective
I don’t believe that we’ve ever been to the moon. I believe Stanley Kubrick’s confession. All will be disclosed soon, I feel.
A decent percentage of the Arsenal fanbase and football fans in general can’t leave Arsenal alone. They got in a NASA pod and flew to the moon. Whilst there they sat around in a large circle and shouted at each other. Some were obsessed with being right or not wrong based on their long-held Arsenal feelings. Others had just stood next to Angry Alfie in the pub too long and he had finally penetrated the football part of their brain. The rest had simply taken their anxiety to a dark place of negativity and lost their prescription that could’ve brought them back to reality.
We are all struggling with this run-in. We are all saying irrational things. We are all shouting at the TV and this time it’s not all Gary Neville or Talksport’s fault. This Arsenal fan has been to therapy so I feel I can help all of us. Therapy involved hanging out with my 5 year old niece. She didn’t understand why I was so upset at these little red and white men on the 8K flat screen and just wanted to tell me about Rhett, her new boyfriend, that she gained by pushing him on the swings at recess. Oh, and “let’s go play hide and seek.”
I went on the socials and picked out a few to discuss….
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Some are struggling to separate Premier League Arsenal from Champions League Arsenal. There are many ways to win. Arteta is leaning into the strength of the team. Logic would say that this isn’t a bad plan. We are by far the hardest team to score against. My opinion backed up by the facts above. It’s not even close. Because we want to be entertained as a part of our footballing experience, and rightly so, we would rather do what Bayern did and win whilst conceding 3 goals. Sure it would be more memorable but the coach has to look around his locker room and decide if we can score 4 goals like they did. Based on talent and form it would be potentially suicidal to play a basketball game like they did.
Arteta’s addiction to ‘control’ isn’t just rooted in his personality. It is in looking at the cards that PL teams are dealt and intelligently deciding that running endlessly back and forth each three days is perhaps not clever.
Looking at this fact and this opinion shouldn’t the narrative be….. ‘Intelligent Arteta leaning into clean sheets as his players struggle with form and fatigue.’
Rather impressive, but no round of applause from anyone. Huh!
One of the buttons that you can push to really annoy me is to tell me that every reason is an excuse. This perspective is based purely in facts and the difference in the freshness that players from other leagues feel is stark. Having seen how we have struggled recently and not really rebounded, I would be an idiot to think it was just ‘bottling’ or ‘pressure.’ It is fatigue, also. We can fight about whether Arteta should’ve played Norgaard more to help the situation. That is not a discussion from the moon, it’s real. If Arsenal win the Champions League, I think it will be a 10 minute standing ovation simply because they shouldn’t be close because of the 20% more minutes that successful PL teams play. In fact, if Arsenal do win the CL then the achievement will embarrass the fools mainly because most won’t back down from their ‘Arsenal are boring’ or ‘Arsenal only score on set plays’ narrative.
Perhaps Alvarez is flirting, but so many non-PL related players, coaches and media say the exact same thing. This is another example of how those outside the UK pay more attention to the game itself rather than the drama or weekly narrative.
To be balanced it is as important to state what is going wrong as what is worthy of flowers. Arsenal were the favourites for the CL and now they are not. Rightly so, because we have been hit with key injuries (1 in 1 out), fatigue, nerves and as James Benge states here, our attack is not firing and not of the quality right now of others who are chasing the PL and CL. It is important to also say that back in the autumn Arsenal’s attack was certainly considered good enough, so the gap isn’t as far apart as the angry heads and narrative numpties would have you think. Martinelli, Trossard, Madueke and Gyokeres were taking turns making the very best teams look poor. Admittedly, it has been rare that they all light their fire at the same time.
This is what actually happened vs Sporting. Our bench had depth and quality and we went from Arteta trying to threaten Sporting with pace to switching to technical security. This was evidenced by removing the memory of ‘what if’ in the last 20 minutes and seeing that we totally controlled the game.
Because the media are so focused on what their lil pea brains can understand, you won’t see this type of high level observation from them. It certainly doesn’t fit their narrative of Arsenal bending the rules, either.
Ultimately, this the the truth that most are dancing around.
Have you seen this rather amazing stat on the back pages?
Another fact. Not opinion, fact. What is actually going on. It’s like Arsenal are a social experiment to see if black can be white.
If you have been and still are nervous, fine. So am I. Every game. It’s natural for any team in any sport that has repeatedly ‘almost’ won to want to protect their heart from breaking. Just don’t forget gratitude because I don’t know about you but I often have flashbacks to City at the Emirates with Arteta sitting on the City bench as they embarrass us, knowing that he may be about to inherit this train wreck.
Conclusion…. The people who flew to the moon have an annoying addiction to setting themselves up to be right. If they are proven wrong, they vanish. If they are right, they will search their posts for hours to tell you.
Thanks for reading, commenting, quoting and sharing! There are so many kind hearted Gooners out there.