Arsenal Draw Towards Finishing Line as Opponents Slip Up
He scores on his Birthday
By Boris Mellor
May 6 2012
At the end of the game Arsenal began the lap of tears, the trudge of tragedy, the circle of gloom; or the lap of appreciation as Wenger prefers to call it, in front of less than a third of the once present crowd. The other two thirds quietly, without any protest melted away. The majority had preferred to flee rather than become involved in a civil war with their compatriots. The third that remained, including myself, cheered loudly and sang to RvP, I saw no point in demoralising the team further.
Oh how the Norwich fans mocked and the players had to pull well away from the away area, I can’t remember the last time away fans got so much fun out of the final home game lap of depreciation, it was embarrassing.
Song looked embarrassed, and most of the rest looked haunted, well aware they had just made a terrible error. There were no songs for Pat Rice, and a minority sang the Wenger song. Most Arsenal fans left the stadium feeling low as they felt their team was no longer in the driving seat. Not having a crystal ball they were not to know that both Spurs and Villa would slip up on the Sunday (Correction should read Spurs and Newcastle would slip up. With Newcastle losing at home against City, and Spurs drawing at Villa).
The draw against Norwich means that Arsenal have only won one of their last five games and have nine out of the last 21 possible points. The leaky bucket known as the defence has conceded 47 goals. The team is yet to win a game when Arteta is not playing, which is all very worrying as the team will have to win at WBA.
It’s amazing after yesterday’s very poor performance that theoretically the team is still in the driving seat, albeit with the handbrake on, running out of petrol and no sense of direction.
The match can be summed up very simply, Arsenal started brightly with a Benayoun goal on under two minutes, they then allowed Norwich to dominate for the rest of the half, or perhaps the canaries were playing the better football.
It wasn’t until the 72nd minute that Arsenal were cohesive enough to score, and by 80 minutes were actually 3-2 up. This was time that the alleged famous mental strength was needed, it was time to close the game down, but the headless chickens that constitute the Gunners’ midfield decided to go AWOL and give Norwich an easy go at Arsenal’s undefended goal. Five minutes plus injury time was not enough time for Arsenal’s clueless attack to find a way back.
So a draw it was and hence the low key lap of appreciation, if only we had known that Spurs and Newcastle would fluff it. If we win on Sunday no doubt one or two will tell me it was all in Arsene Wenger’s script, at least I haven’t wasted my money buying a ticket for the big screening on Sunday next. Fasten your seat belts its well and truly squeaky bottom time.
Thought for the week
Tim Payton of the Arsenal Supporters Trust tweeted the following: “How much are Arsenal pushing their luck. Leave £45m in bank & hey presto have £45m to cover cost of not making CL. Self-fulfilling failure?”
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012:05:13:14:35:55 by eduardo.
How do a team like Norwich score 3 goals at Emirate? Come on Arsene, buy mr Vertonghen, please.
Since the end of WW1, 1919, when the FA restarted its 4 tier football league, with Arsenal fc in the 1st div, there’s only ever been one club to have never been relegated from Div 1/ EPL.
Arsenal fc
Let’s keep making history
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012:05:06:19:49:59 by Padre Pio.
We are better off buying only experienced quality who are able to organise the defence without being told too or trained.
Why are we also seeing so many similar goals scored past us? Especially from our left hand side.
For example, we often see a counter attack with 2 v 2, the person holding the ball waits for his team mate to run wide of the defenders. He plays a simple ball. Then a player, normally Gibbs, will try to get close,fail, the shot will deflect off him and over the head of szesney
A couple of problems:
1. Why has the problem of teams counter attacking us at home not been addressed yet? It happens every game
2. Surely we should try and have more than 2 players back. It's not lie we are scoring from corners/freekicks often.
3. Gibbs needs to get A LOT TIGHTER to his man. Too many times he tries to tackle/ block but allows too much space for the attacker. This means they are able to shoot or pass
4. We have seen so many of these deflected because the defender is not tight enough. But then why do they loop over or past szszney? He comes out of his goal sometimes without any will purpose or endeavour (apart from corners/freekicks, he is good at those).
When he comes off his line he seems unaware of what position to take up. An example is both the 2nd and 3rd goals. If he let gibbs deal with the man, then he would have stayed on his line and not been chipped.
For the 3rd goal, he came out of his line, then 2 seconds after went back to it. This allowed the norwich player time to pick his angle and score. If szszney had just chose either option first, we might not have conceded.
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
But, he has read those stories and he now fancies himself as an offensive weapon. he has been wandering progressively farther and farther away from his own goal and now it has become second nature to him ... even with a 3-2 lead and ten minutes to play.
SHAME on wenger for not seeing this tactical weakness in our defence and correcting it. Of course, there are so many other weaknesses in our defence that it is understandable how an inattentive wenger could have missed this one.