Where was that all season? by Konstantin Mitov
I honestly can’t quite believe how easily it looked for us to win this FA cup. I didn’t really think we’d turn up, because of the disappointment of finishing fifth and our defensive crisis, which to my surprise didn’t really show.
We we’re the better team and we deserved to win. I have to say that this was the best all around performance from Arsenal all season. Starting with immense individual performances from everyone, which I’ll cover in a moment, I want to highlight how Arsenal felt a whole thing again.
Fans, players and the manager looked united and we packed a punch that hammered Chelsea! Hell, even the owner was here. There was a connection that’s been missing so badly all season, but the fans were brilliant. Wembley feels like home hey?
Now I have to praise some players starting with a guy I’ve been a massive fan of and that’s Nacho Monreal. One of few who were 100% all season, he moved to an unlikely back 3 full of problems and he was his excellent self and all around the back 3 were amazing. That guy Holding. He’s easily slipping into becoming my favorite player.
But the big man on the day is Mertesacker. That was a captain’s performance from a man with 37 minutes of game time, slotting in against the champions and dominating the defense. I like the fact Per is vocal, something Koscielny is missing despite being the better defender. The future of the German is unknown, but he made a quite a game to be remembered with for sure.
Moving upwards, I’ve given lots of stick to Xhaka and Ramsey, but this month we’re finally seeing something good from them and the Swiss just dominated Kante. Aaron scored another Wembley winner and when the team plays so good all over the pitch it’s hard to not be happy.
Even Giroud came on and actually did something! Danny and the Ox were fantastic and Hector as well. Ozil was really good and he should’ve scored at least a goal and Arsenal should’ve scored more, but look no further than the big man Alexis for goals when it matters and he delivered again. 300,000 a week are pennies for a player of that calibre.
Now, I have to give this one to the manager who completely outclassed Conte this time and the Italian still is arguably the best manager in the land. Having said all that, we still need to look at the season from an objective perspective and missing the Champions league is a disaster for us.
Winning trophies is always great, but this shouldn’t excuse the fact, we’ll find out in the beginning of June whether the manager is staying (he is but officially it will come then) and this really destabilized the team and was a huge reason for us missing the top 4 no matter how Arsene tries to deflect this.
The way the board handled this was also terrible. If we want Wenger, why not announce his contract? Why put all of us Limbo? This was just one game still. Not taking away anything from our amazing performance, but the league takes 38 games and we lost like 9 games there. We’ve not made 80 points for a while and our transfer windows have been poor.
We always wait till the end to get business done. Look at City, who already bought that Silva guy. Bang, done, get him in for preseason. I’d be surprised if we do business before mid August. And remember, in Arsene’s own words we started the season unprepared and it ended up costing us.
If Arsene doesn’t add quality and keep Sanchez and Ozil, the questions will be back with a bang. Overall we showed that we are not that bad and that we can play against good teams, but we’ve seen good performances in individual games before, it’s about making it through the entire season with that sort of commitment and it’s all I’ve really asked for.
If we play like that every game with the same intensity and desire, nobody would complain. I really think that this little chant “you’re not fit to wear this shirt” actually kicked the players in the backside and they started to care again. At the end of the day a trophy is a trophy, but we shouldn’t paper over the cracks. I’m hoping we’ll reshuffle the backroom staff and we’ll add somebody to help with transfers.
We’ll stick with Arsene, because we’re unprepared to bring in somebody new, but the FA cup can’t excuse performances like Palace, WBA, Watford, the fact we dropped Sanchez against Liverpool and the overall failure of the season – and Arsene still does not deserve a new contract for the way he always deflects the blame from himself. But he didn’t fail to mention how he deserves respect when he and the Board showed us fans none of it and he praised his 7 FA cup wins and unbeaten season.
I think that others should be talking of your success and if you have to remind them of it, than it’s probably to hide recent failures. Arsenal should be about bigger things than the FA cup. We can celebrate a trophy today, but a summer of hard work is coming and a lot of answers will be given then. Till then, enjoy this FA cup. For all the pain we Arsenal fans had to endure, all of us, despite of our feelings for the players or the manager we deserved something to be happy about!
Konstantin
We are great at cup games because only one match will determine who continues. In the league we dont have consistency for the ultimate trophy after 38 games.
U say we’re great at cup games
Bayern Munich ring a bell
We gave our all against city and Chelsea
The fact the team can only do that a few times a season is worrying
We always rely on the brilliance of one individual to carry us
Monreal often gave good performance in each position he was assigned to, so I am not surprised with his performance in the FA Cup Final. An unsung hero and underrated defender. Arsenal is lucky to have him.
Mertesacker is always excellent at reading the threat and good at playing offside trap. His only problem is just he is very slow. If you really paid attention, actually some of the opponent’s goals happened because of Koscielny’s blunders and he was often out of position. Because Koscielny is more aggressive and faster than Mertesacker, the fans often neglect his blunders and blamed Mertesacker instead. Mertesacker can be good asset next season if Arsenal keeps using 3-4-2-1.
Arsenal suddenly changed its gear and beat many teams with the new formation, because it is still new. It surprised many teams this season, but it will not be the same next season.
Against better prepared teams next season, Arsenal will struggle to score using 3-4-2-1 and will have to be smarter. This will be the time when the qualities of Arsenal’s players matter. If we keep using the same standard quality players, we will have the same disappointing season.
This is why Arsenal has to get better players that can possess the ball longer, produce forward through balls consistently, pass better and hungry for achievements like Sanchez.
Saw the headline and didn’t bother to read further.
We won a trophy, a big trophy.
Either celebrate for a while or just eff off!
I’m up for a fight, bring it on.
Il fight u
Queensbury rules u swine
I will celebrate my win by taking ur woman and making her cook me something flavoursome
lol funny
Remember, injuries are our constant downfall and disrupt stability both in terms of influencing others team members positional sense and the manager tweaking the team to accommodate the injuries.
Every season we have one or two long term injuries to key players and stats have shown we have more than the others, although i remember reading Man Utd have been catching us up on the injury chart the past 3 seasons.
Our first bit of business is to sell Wilshere. Even if we bring in someone average (e.g. another Elneny) at least we have a squad player thats always available.
Is this the Xhaka we bought or we are going to see Xhaka of the league again?
If 70% the other matches were played like this people will be talking about Xhaka not Kante who was missing yesterday.
As great of a win as it was, it was a one match deal and one tends to play their very best in a Cup final. Remember we were overwhelming favorites in the League Cup final against relegated Birmingham but lost.
Wenger didn’t get a Top dm and forward. He also made poor team selection choices during the season
Chelsea had a Top Defensive Midfielder (Kante) and two Top forwards (Hazard and Costa). We were poor defensively in midfield and only had 1 top forward. Alexis should have remained up front as Giraud and Welbeck are not of the same quality as Costa, Ibrahimovic, Aguero, Luka kudos, Kane
What really are you talking about?
Yesterday’s match? No.
You just can’t let it go, can you, Konstantin? Enjoy it, we’ve totally deserved it. Whatever happens in the summer can wait… and so can your negativity and hate.
The question in my mind is why did we lose so shamefully to Bayern Munich? Are we really 8 goals worse than Bayern? Would Atletico, Dortmund and Monaco have lost by that margin? Let’s find the reason and fix that. Arsenal must be able to give a game to the best teams in the world.
A legitim question.
Why do we often blame only Wenger and not the players? Many players know for sure their position is not threatened by one so they do not seem to care and maybe that is Wenger’s fault because we do not have many quality players at certain positions.
Wnger WILL LEAVE now, I am sure on that but who is coming? Moyes and Gaal types? We will be complaining for one thing or another for the coming 2-3 years before we build a winner Arsenal I am afraid.
Wenger keeping his medal has sparked speculation that he could be leaving ?? but I doubt that’s of his own accord, there’s no way that he’ll walk away from the £10 million that’s on offer. It’s more than likely that he kept this winners medal because it was a record 7 FA cups for him.
It was great winning the FA Cup. Just like last time, and the time before.
And nothing will change next season. Just like last time, and the time before.
@ vlad, let it go
There was serious disharmony within the team. We don’t know what it was, or what caused it but you could see it on the field and on the benches. AW has alluded to it as well. It has been resolved in the last month, and seemed to run from January to April, and I believe it was the reason for Õzil taking time off. If only it hadn’t happened, I think we could’ve won the EPL and done an awful lot better in the CL. The only person who largely wasn’t affected by it was AS7, as he is pretty single minded about his football.
On a brighter note, we prevented the Spuds from winning a trophy yet again on Saturday – the charity shield!
We’ve been better since the new 3 4 3 system was implemented. It has given us a better defensive solidity which gives the the midfield and forwards more confident to go forward properly. Then when everyone is doing their jobs well it unites the team.
Long may this system continue.
wenger va nous manquer et vous les detracteurs vous allez demander la demission du nouvel entrainneur ou bout de 3mois arsenal sera dans les relegables bonjour les degats
Disappointed with Konstantin that surrendered so easily, nothing has changed WENGER needs to leave and what better opportunity than winning the CUP…….as he will not let go so easily he has to be given 12 months for an orderly transition, but to bow so easily and keep him for 2 more years and 2 more after that is simply madness, one victory and makes everyone forget how under his reign we’ve seen AFC stale for the last 12 years…..will not take an ounce of credit to yesterday’s victory, but AFC is there for bigger things and is clear that under AW they will not happen…Konstantin take a grip disregard Vlad’s comments and continue voicing those Fans that expect more from their Club.
i always thought mertesacker would do well on a back 3 setting. his lack of speed is totally ok with this kind of formation. can’t wait to see how we will fair next year on this line.
holding/mustafi – mertesacker/gabriel – kosicelny/Monreal
pretty good back 3 combination don’t you guys thinks?
My wife’s a French teacher and she said garsi spoke quite good French. Happy to translate if anyone’s interested.
Please translate….it could be a very useful information on Wenger’s future.
I have a question. If we do not have the best squad and the best manager, why would anyone expect us to win the league? We did not lose nine games by accident. It seems like the only thing I ever hear when I read about arsenal fan’s frustrations is expectation. Nobody has been able to explain to me why we deserve to win the league. Expectation alone is not enough. We played Bayern twice and they thrashed us twice. Why? Because they were that much better than us. Infact, if not for the stupid red card that Aturo Vidal got playing against Real Madrid, Bayern Munic in my view was the strongest team in the champions league and was on course to win the damn thing.
The board can let Wenger go or renew his contract and it wouldn’t make a difference if we are not able to put together the best squad and hire the best manager. Sporting competitions are fiercer than ever now. Teams have money to spend and the top teams have no limit on how much they will spend to buy the best players. Until we are able to compete in the transfer market and out muscle our opponents financially, we don’t get to expect anything by way of league titles and champions league titles. That is just unrealistic.
Respect your point of view, but teams such as LC (PL) Atletico and even Monaco are at the same or less expending level than us and despite this fact they achieved more than Arsene, on the other hand Mou and Pep spent millions and flexed muscle spending to achieve close to nothing…. my point is cohesion between players and their Manager, modernize your tactics, buy key players and build the team around them, WENGER failed on these key factors, despite being told by pundits and Fans, alike he only changed formation when he passed the break point and the world turned against him…..