I suppose you could feel a little bit sorry for those members of the football media and TV pundits that have thrived on their anti-Arsenal comments in recent years, because they have had a pretty thin diet to feed on this season as Arsene Wenger has got the Gunners playing the best football in the division and the squad has shown a much better toughness and togetherness to get over the games where the fluent football is not working.
So the likes of Michael Owen have been left sniffing about for scraps with which to criticise Arsenal for. Just look how people jumped on our poor performance and heavy defeat at Southampton on Boxing Day as ‘proof’ that Arsenal were still weak and did not have what it takes to win the title, completely ignoring the fact that we had won all four previous games in December including the one against everyone’s pre-season favourites Man City and the brilliant away win over Olympiacos to secure a place in the next Champions League round.
Of all these Arsenal bashers, though, the worst offender must surely be Adrian Durham who has finally found a stick to beat Arsenal with this week in his Daily Mail column. What this muppet has written is that by missing the match away to Stoke on Sunday our German midfield star Mesut Ozil has proved that he has no stomach for the title fight.
According to Durham either Ozil or Wenger should be castigated for not forcing him to play with a foot injury and he seems to think the German just didn’t fancy it. And there’s us thinking that all those medical and fitness experts might have had a say. Does this fool really think it would be better to have Ozil limping around the Britannia and risking further injury problems?
I might be wrong but did this same moronic hack have a go at Wenger for playing Alexis Sanchez who then pulled a hamstring? He also ignores the fact that Wenger admitted that Ozil had this foot problem in the Liverpool match, which he played in but was not his usual self.
Is that maybe why the boss rested his star man, to make sure that he would be back to his best for the crucial games to come?