I can’t help feeling I’ve missed something since Sunday afternoon. It’s like I closed my eyes and when I opened them again time had leaped forward from March to May.
From matchweek 31 to matchweek 38. From West Ham still being right there in the mix with three other teams and just four points separating us in the battle for Premier League survival – to suddenly finding it’s all over. The game’s up and we are already down!
The optimism which had grown in recent weeks, as a result of taking 15 points from our previous nine Premier League games, not to mention winning through three rounds of FA Cup football to reach the quarter final stage of the competition, suddenly evaporating into thin air because of defeat at the home of a team sitting fourth in the league and still riding high in Europe with a genuine shot at a European trophy.
Every defeat hurts, of course it does. No-one actually likes losing. But sometimes you just have to hold up your hands and admit the opposition were better on the day. That was certainly the case at Villa Park.
The fact that some of our fanbase believed we could actually get something from the game says much about our recent upturn in form. But surely a setback in one game doesn’t mean we are suddenly reverting to the depths of despair we all suffered earlier in the season? Even the best teams lose sometimes – as the Gooners also discovered to their cost on Sunday.
A number of posts I saw circulating on social media straight after the game positively wreaked of negativity. The suggestion being our game was up. We were now already down and out as a consequence of this one result. That’s nonsense, in my opinion!
There are still seven games to play, 21 points in total to play for. Anyone who believes there won’t be more twists and turns to come for us and our close adversaries, in the remaining weeks of the season, doesn’t really understand this game we love mostly, but love to hate on occasions.
If we feel bad about losing to Villa imagine how sick the spuds must feel about not just losing, but losing heavily, at home in their futuristic stadium, to a club who started the day below them in the league. Just let that sink in – they’re having to!
Our next league game isn’t until after we have faced Leeds United in the FA Cup. It was our cup victory over QPR back in January which really kicked off our upsurge in form and increased our belief in survival. Victory in the cup again would surely be the perfect tonic for the team when taking on Wolves five days later.
Win that Friday night encounter and we will go above Spurs, who have to travel to high-flying Sunderland that weekend, and level on points with Forest, who themselves have to face Aston Villa. Leeds too, still very much in the mix, have to visit Old Trafford. It’s another huge weekend!
Nothing is a given. The unexpected can always happen. Nuno is a pragmatist – he obviously had a game-plan for the Villa match – possibly setting his sights on a draw,. But his three centre back strategy was blown out of the water very late on with the warm-up injury to Jean-Clair Todibo.
That was a disruption he didn’t need, and the hastily re-shaped starting 11 failed to cope with. As Jamie Carragher rightly said after the game: “They shouldn’t get too disheartened (West Ham fans). They lost at one of the toughest places to go in the Premier League. Forget today happened and focus on the next couple of weeks because that game (v Wolves) is absolutely huge.”
The visit from the West Midlanders will be a different proposition – one we will hopefully go into with Crysencio Summerville, our most potent attacking force in recent weeks, fit and back in the side. That would be a massive boost for our task.
Under the London Stadium lights we need to recreate the kind of atmosphere we saw on European nights under David Moyes. Maybe those willing to write us off after Villa might contemplate leaving their negativity at the turnstile that night, if they bother to attend of course, because we’ll need positivity all the way.
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