Arsenals Mental Metal by John Picco
The quote that “Champions are propelled by desire, not compelled by fear” is one that rings true in my head this season. I find myself so desperately wanting to be all in with 100% confidence that this will be the season that, after such a long wait, the Gunners will once again take their place as champions.
And boy is this team exciting! Having the youngest average age of any squad in the Prem this season is definitely part of the reason why the energy is so high. It is also part of the reason why nervous energy remains. How do we truly measure, with confidence, the capability of a group so young as we enter the dog days of the season? And I am not sure I mean statistically.
Hear me out…
Take Liverpool and Man City in recent seasons. Game after game you would never lose confidence in the upcoming ability to change the game in a moment’s notice. Both teams could be non-existent for 80 minutes and trailing by multiple goals. You knew it was coming… You knew they would collect all 3 points!
The mental metal was so strong that it would eventually show, and weaknesses in the armor of those of lesser strength would begin to crack. And now we have that same desire about our Gunners!
Yet, when they met the former mentioned “Cityzens” last we looked like the youngest averaged aged squad in the Prem, however….not in the same way. The Tomiyasu back pass to Ramsdale that neatly fell at the feet of the ever confident and capable Kevin De Bruyne was living proof that we were in fact watching a young and nervous team building their own mental metal.
A lesson that must happen by the way to build a team capable of contending season after season for the long haul. Yet it takes me back to the opening of why and how I was nervous to act confident. I was anxious to watch them complete the journey….Until today!
The Bournemouth game today hit me in all of the feels that come with the confidence of mental fortitude at its finest! In a match where we easily could have been down 3-0 (or beyond!), that also had roughly 98 non-called potential handball offenses by the Cherries, (which could have caused mental lapses for the players themselves by the way), our Gunners came through! To the last moment, the last play, the last touch of the ball!
They held it together despite the clock against them, despite the fact that City gained 3 points earlier in the day, and despite the fact that the youngest average age squad in the league should struggle with this.
I know there will always be bumps in the road, bad luck turns and injury woes that forever plague sports at this level. Yet this squad is propelled by desire, and I for one desire feeling the emotions that I felt today over and over again until the trophy is raised.
I am a proud Arsenal fan today!
John Picco
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I want to go on record, yesterday was the greatest game played at the Emirates ever.
Forget about the Man United game or the 5 : 2 win against the spuds and countless others .
Ofcourse it’s not the size of the club we played but it was how we were made to suffer and the whole emotional connection involved.
Gunsmoke you are far too young to claim that “greatest ever game” with any certainty. And if you include the last fifty years at Highbury too, it would not make the top hundred for sure.
In essence, it was good half hour for us, preceded by a woeful first hour!
One of the best games I have been to in The Emirates, the game had everything a goal in the first ten seconds and the winning goal in the last ten seconds, pleased for Nelson, the kid has gone through so much with injury problems, Arteta loves him, Odegaard just kept plugging and plugging. Saka had a bit of an off day, but it happens. Ramsdale’s two saves shows why he is class. The fans were brilliant but the mental celebrations at the end were incredible. I had to sit down with my mates just to digest what we had watched, and for the first time ever being asked by the Stewards to leave. The fans were outside by the Tony Adams statue celebrating. This game could be the turning point and so glad it got up Neville’s nose the anti-Arsenal c..t.
Great day, great game, even now my voice is hoarse which is a relief for my girlfriend, and my body aches from jumping up and down at the goals. This team just doesn’t give up
Great to see the never-say-die attitude, but it also shows we struggle to make open-play goals sometimes
We need to fix our weakness in the defending set-pieces, otherwise our recent inconsistency could make Man City catch us up
Exactly this! Though I am happy and excited as everyone else about our victory I fear better teams will not give us a chance to get back in the game. We need to sort out our weaknesses ASAP. Our defending, lapses in focus, scoring from open play.
Now we got 5 tough match(Newcastle, Chelsea, mancity, Liverpool, Brighton) and mancity has got only 4 tough match ( Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal, Brighton) so they have easier fixture than us. In this regard mancity vs Arsenal game will be title decider. As of now we are near but still quite far away from title. Losing points to Everton n Brentford was already blow to us, now no room for any mistakes otherwise we have to start from zero again next season.
@Vz, so you are saying other teams like Chelsea, Brentford, Everton.
Man city will beat them hands down?
Guy, this is premier league, I am afraid of playing against relegation threaten than the big team….
Anybody can beat anybody in premier league….
This is precisely what I’ve been saying
Man City will play against Chelsea, Liverpool and us at Etihad stadium, whereas we’ll play against Newcastle and those teams away
Hopefully Brighton can defeat them
Arsenal will suffer against Brighton at home and Newcastle away. These two games with the trip to Fulham might be the banana peel we are dreading. The Liverpool and mancity games are games we can afford to drop points. Brighton, Newcastle, fulham must win games but they will be the hardest. Arsenal need to see every opposition as man City from now on so as to contain the complacency that is beginning to trickle in to their play
The expression you need is “banana skin”, NOT “Banana peel”! Just to let you know!
All are semantics Jon fox. Using ” peel” instead of “skin” doesn’t change the context of the expression nor the message one was trying to convey.
Why will they?, have you been watching Arsenal we simply refuse to lie down, top of the league ahead by five points best away record in the PL. Teams will be fearing us
I don’t count Brighton as a tough match for us
If u play open football we’ll outscore u
I see Crystal Palace as a tougher match to Brighton even
Unless Chelsea have improved before we meet them, they’re not a tough team also
I am still going back to watch the highlights of the game even after rewatching and rewatching. The amount of Joy this win gave me is undescribable , I really hope we can go all the way and win the league the boys have put in a lot of blood, sweat and tears lately and I am so proud of them. Special shout to Aaron Ramsdale for that save in the first half when billings , solanke and zando ( can’t remember his name) broke out and countered us , that save was a game changer. Let’s hope Liverpool beats manure today so we keep our distance. Coyg.
Ramsdale did indeed make that great save but, in fact, had they scored, VAR would have picked up an earlier offside when the ball was passed forward to Bournemouth forwards, so it would have been ruled out anyway.
So it was not, in fact, a crucial save, top class though it certainly was.
One key observation in the bournemouth match is that NOBODY HIDE. Doesn’t matter if they were having a good day or a stinker, everyone wanted the ball, made runs took responsibility. The reason we had such difficulty to beat Bournemouth is that a lot of players had a bad or average performance especially in the 1st 60 min.
Odeggard was doing his best Jonny Wilkinson impression with his shooting, same for Martenelli, Saka had a stinker, back 4 was bad, Partey lost his marker for the 2nd goal. But the mentality was fk this i’m gonna keep trying till the end.
Infact i don’t think i have seen this team downed tool and accept it just was not our day. Even when losing 1-3 vs the manchester clubs.
nice comment not even appearing here
Not that fast. I still think there are major issues we need to fix or else we end up 2nd or 3rd. Majority of our troubles have been self-inflicted.
1. Treat every team as a top team. The way we’ve acted against these so-called small teams has been disgraceful at times. Brentford, Everton away, Leeds away, Fulham, Bournemouth. All these teams deserved to be two, or three goals up at halftime we completely underestimated them.
2. Defense coaches need to work on Gabriel. He’s been at fault for several goals we’ve conceded lately, he either switches off or gets too comfortable.
3. Viera really needs to step up his overall game (if we are gonna rely on him for the run-in). He was Bournemouth’s favorite target. Take away the hefty fee we paid and he’s not even at par with an unfit ESR (intensity-wise). The talent is surely there but you need more than talent to survive in the EPL.
4. Decision-making: Some players hold onto the ball for far too long when a simple touch should suffice. We had so many opportunities where simple one-touch football could’ve unlocked the opposition but instead preferred running around in circles.
Fix these and we are 98% there.
One key observation in the bournemouth match is that NOBODY HIDE. Doesn’t matter if they were having a good day or a stinker, everyone wanted the ball, made runs took responsibility. The reason we had such difficulty to beat Bournemouth is that a lot of players had a bad or average performance especially in the 1st 60 min.
Odeggard was doing his best Jonny Wilkinson impression with his shooting, same for Martenelli, Saka had a stinker, back 4 was bad, Partey lost his marker for the 2nd goal. But the mentality was i’m gonna keep trying till the end.
Infact i don’t think i have seen this team downed tool and accept it just was not our day. Even when losing 1-3 vs the manchester clubs.
Headlines need improving.
Mental Metal so far.
Still 12 games to go with City and United not far enough away from us.
One game at a time and enjoy the ride and hope that it lasts till the end of the season.
Nelsensational! My word!
Hope Smith R and Nelson can cover until at least international break and after that we get all the injured strikers fit. One of Smith R or Nelson need to play well until end of the season to provide rest to the likes of Saka , Mertineli..