Chill! by TB
I don’t understand you JustArsenal members. Someone help me out here, because I seem to remember this time last year we were laughing at Spurs when they signed all those players in the same window – and their players struggled to gel. What did you guys expect would happen to us?
I don’t understand this divine right Arsenal fans seem to have over their team. Every team has this problem when they sign so many players in one window. The last time Chelsea did it, they came 6th if I recall properly. We signed 6 players this window, and if you include Campbell, that’s seven players that need to be incorporated into the team. Not just the team, but the first team. In fact, many of them have a case of being in the starting lineup. Why the need to be so negative when the truth is, things could have been much much worse? I mean have none of you ever played a team sport before? Why must we blame someone, we can’t we just use logic and rationalize?
Last season was our best season in years. Almost a decade in fact! It’s no coincidence that we only signed two players in last summers window. The team chemistry due to continuity in the team was plain for all to see and we were playing brilliantly even before we signed Ozil. He just helped amplify what we already had. That being said, the potential that has been shown in this team should be really encouraging to us fans! I was as pissed as anyone we didn’t beat spurs, but suddenly, we all think we’re crap? Alexis has been brilliant for us. Absolutely brilliant….individually! He’s going to be massive for us. That ace we need in tight games, like against Besiktas or against City.
However, it’s no coincidence that our best flowing game came when he wasn’t on the pitch. As brilliant as he has been individually, he is still struggling to adapt to our style, and we are still struggling to adapt to his. If you think back to his goals, all but one has been one borne out of instinctive play by him. He isn’t getting on the end of many team moves because his style is very different to ours. In the end, when he settles, he will be a gem for us, of this there is no doubt, but we need to be patient. The present first 11 has only been together 4 weeks and we will still need to incorporate Walcott.
Yes the window wasn’t perfect, and by that I mean I was super pissed when we didn’t buy a centreback, but seriously, we were happy in the summer for a reason. It’s because the quality of players we have this season has risen significantly over the past two years. Now we can afford to keep Cazorla, or wilshere or even Alexis or Giroud or Walcott on the bench and still field a very very strong team.
Last season at this point, we were top and top for ages and that bred at lot of false confidence and we eventually burnt out. There’s no point peaking early and then fading away later. This team is yet to fully gel and definitely isn’t close to peaking, and yet we’ve faced the Champions Man City, gone to Goodison Park, we’re fourth and we remain unbeaten. We have every reason to believe that we will be able to challenge later in the season when this team fully hits stride.
For now, we just need to keep ourselves in contention while we wait for that to happen.
So chill!