It’s time to get back on track by Sam P
So Arsene Wenger reckons Arsenal have had a bad week. If you had been reading this site in the last few days you would think that the defeat by Manchester United last weekend has sent Arsenal down to the murky depths of the Conference League!
The reality is a bit tamer. We lost away at Old Trafford, where us and a lot of other have all traditionally struggled, but tonight we get a great chance to regain the three lost points when we beat lowly Swansea at the Emirates tonight. Hang on let me clarify again our last week. We lost two games, one AWAY to the most successful Premier League team in the last 20 years, and the other to the treble-winning best-team-in-the-world Barcelona. So suddenly (as happens every time we lose a game) Arsene Wenger couldn’t manage a pub team and, in fact, most of our players wouldn’t even be good enough for that Sunday League team. Come on let’s keep a little bit of grip on reality shall we?
Arsenal have lost before, and Wenger and the players have been slated before, but somehow they realise that it is only one game, it is only three points out of a season, and they simply have to pick themselves up, dust themselves down, and go out and fight in the next game. That is a bit like life. NOBODY (and I’m talking to all of you) wins every time. We ALL make mistakes, at home or at work. Do you sack yourself every time you make a mistake? Do you get a new manager every time his workforce doesn’t do an absolutely perfect job? Of course you don’t! Everybody would be getting new jobs every month if that was the case.
As Wenger said: “What we want to do is defy all the odds that are against us at the moment,”
“The best way to do it is to fight together for that. We have come out of a bad week so we want to have a good week now.
“It’s as simple as that and that’s why you love competition. A bad week is not permanent, it’s what you make of it and how you respond. That’s the beauty of sport. Things change quickly one way or the other. That’s beautiful as well.
“We are professional and we want to focus on how we respond to the defeat. It can happen. We lost 3-2 at Manchester United, we are not happy with the result but if you analyse the game we had two lapses of focus that we paid for. That made the game difficult for us after.
“We gave a lot against Barcelona and the disappointing outcome certainly had an impact on our belief against Manchester United, but we want to focus on the positives and recover from it. We want to give our best from now until the end of the season.”
You know, strangely enough, I also want the team to give their best, in every game every time, for the rest of the season and the next one too. But I don’t expect them to win EVERY SINGLE GAME! So let’s give the team and the manager a break shall we. Stop screaming obscenities and let them do their job to the best of their abilities without a constant barrage of criticism. That only makes the job harder.
If they are given our support, like they should have, we may even win the League. Now there’s a thought.
Sam