Important win marks the best chance in years to reclaim the league title by KM
Well, a very good day to all of you Arsenal ladies and gentleman! It was a fine week for the Arsenal family worldwide as we escaped the group stage leaving the joy of Thursday night for our north London neighbours and finish it off with an easy win against a rock bottom Aston Villa side.
Now there was a game to forget on Sunday. I mean it was one of the poorest games of football I’ve watched in a while, but a win after an away game in Europe is a welcome sight for me. Still, Villa are so terrible, I just don’t see them coming back even if they hire Mourinho, who’s in a relegation battle of his own.
We got ourselves to an early lead thanks to Walcott getting the better of Hutton, which eventually led to a well deserved penalty. I don’t get it why people hammer the referees so much, when it took them 5 seconds to make a decision which was overall correct? Would they be happier if it wasn’t given? Same incident at Liverpool where West Brom were denied an offside goal – again, the correct decision. I’d rather wait 5 seconds than let a wrong decision disrupt our game.
The only other notable thing from the game was our simple passing for our second goal. Ramsey showed desire to get the ball back and then Theo sent Ozil through who slipped it onto Aaron, who made a nice spring and it was 2-0. In the second half, we really didn’t try at all to do something other than wait out the final whistle and although Villa tried to show some spirit they are really short on quality.
Funny banner from their fans saying “Forget the Arsenal, we are Aston Villa”, might as well transcript into “Forget the premierleague, we are in the championship”. Regardless of their misery, I have never seen English top flight division so poor when it comes to the top teams. I watch as much games as I can during the weekend since I just love the league, but in all fairness it’s never been so inconsistent.
Now surely the media will put it as interesting and unpredictable, but of course when you sell a product for 5 billion pounds you’d put it like this, but i watched a City side the other day full of expensive talent, fail to beat a demoralized Swansea team, who recently sacked their manager. Worst of all they got immense luck with their goal and Joe Hart saved them a few times.
With the squad that they have, they should be a dominant force. Worse though was the performance of their fellow cityman from United who got beaten at Bournemouth and LVG is exposed for the fraud manager that he is, so badly he turned on the fans. Next up not so far in the north-west come Liverpool who also needed a slice of luck to get a point of off West Brom at home, despite opening the score.
I like what Klopp did at the end to lift the spirits and connect the crowd with the fans, but with the money spent, Liverpool surely could do better. And last but not least, Spurs, who’d only lost the first game of the season, got beaten by Newcastle at home. Oh I forgot Chelsea but, look this has been coming for some time. In 2008 England had 3 teams in the semi-finals of the CL and now 3 barely scrapped past their groups.
I feel like the top teams here have bad management. With the amount of resources local clubs have the standard should be much higher. Dortmund, Atletico Madrid and Juventus are recent examples of teams with less resources but excellent management. Now Arsenal has been inconsistent for probably the past 10 years under Wenger, but the demise of the other top forces in England is spectacular to say the least.
We face City next and if they repeat the performance of Saturday, they’ll be there for the taking. If we could balance the squad out for the Christmas period we’ll have the best chance of winning this league title in years. Mondays game with City could be a title decider in disguise, because realistically looking all the others are either in shambles or covering up the truth, because they sit close to the top.
Anyway, the past 2 games saved our Champions League campaign, and we are top of the league, even if it stays just for day! I’m happy with that, hope you are as well. Cheers!
Konstantin