One by one those Arsenal hoodoos start to break by KM
Community Shield banter! We won back-to-back super cups or whichever way you’d like to call this preseason opener. You’d see various opinions on whether how much it matters, but it’s a win that finally breaks one statistic. Wenger has a win against Mourinho.
Whichever way you take it, it did matter. The Chelsea players were not happy to lose and their faces couldn’t hide the disappointment. You can bet Mourinho really wanted to take another swipe at Arsene and didn’t fail to do so by stating that we “abandoned our philosophy in the dressing room”.
I think the whole story is a bit childish from two managers aged above 50 with some of the highest salaries in the world. Regardless, it was refreshing to see Arsenal not go out with all guns blazing hoping to outscore them. We let them have possession at large portions of the game and neutralized their attempts to break us.
It was a game of two teams still a bit short of full match fitness. The game will be remembered by a few nasty misses and an excellent goal from the Ox. As I mentioned before, he is having a make or break season. If he stays fit, he’ll be giving Wenger a starting XI headache.
Chambo is one of the few players in our squad who can take a player one on one like he did with Azpilicueta and make room for a shot, or dribble past someone. With him and Alexis we can be really dangerous on the flanks. Cazorla started on the left yesterday and he was really struggling and missed a great one on one with the keeper.
It was nice to see Cech in goal and the Czech international was eager to prove that he’s still got it. The way the line of the defense was pulled away from goal on free kicks was interesting. He also made a couple of nice saves. Mertesacker immediately after the game talked about the calmness that Cech brings to the whole performance of the defense.
So what does this preseason say? We won a bunch of friendly trophies, hammered some teams, squeezed past others, but at the end of the day we bombed City 3:0 last year and still had a horrific start. My biggest worry is that those results might convince Wenger that we don’t need any more signings but in truth, one or two more and we’ll be true title challengers.
We have a huge squad. Alexis, Wilshere and Welbeck were not in the squad yesterday, and we still had a dilemma between Giroud and Walcott. Both failed to impress me in reality. Walcott lacks any sort of physical presence and Giroud missed a good chance. Having a big squad is not a problem, it’s a solution to those times when you need to rotate, something Wenger doesn’t like to do a lot.
So this year, we won the FA cup, won at both Manchester clubs and we’ve registered a win against Mourinho’s Chelsea. It’d be a real shame if we don’t add that world class striker (hi Benzema!). It’s about time we show consistency over the whole season. We need a strong start. West Ham shouldn’t be a problem.
That’s that. have a fine week mocking those Chelsea fans.
Konstantin