At World's End

Whoops! It’s another match report! Frankly,I am finding it hard to keep this up. Opining about Arsenal is one of the last things on my mind right now. But nevertheless,I shall venture to bravely defend the fort against Sir Priority McPrioritus’ cronies who don’t seem to fancy the idea of leaving me alone to wallow in my own whatever-it-is-I-wallow-in. So,having no discernible ability to stretch this analogy further,let’s get right down to the game.

For 90 whole minutes,stuff happened. For the most part,it was extremely tedious. I ended up spending all my yawn-allowance within the first 10 mins of the first half trying very hard not to succumb to the wily tricks of the foul temptress that is gentle and blissful sleep. She kept the ball in my half throughout this period,producing moments of breathtaking beauty one instant,falling over and clutching her face the next. Just when I managed to intercept the ball too. Fucking bitch. But thankfully,the score remained 0-0. It was a narrow escape. Deciding that I had enough of this crap,I took a shot of glucose to revitalize my senses,rationalizing in my naivety that things could only get better from here. Having thus utterly defeated the Evil Witch of Zzzzordor(*ignores widespread cringing*),I decided to concentrate on the game at hand. Throughout the second half however,I was wondering if it was really worth all that effort. Sure,it moved up a level but the level above extremely tedious was,to my surprise,tedious. So some other stuff happened. I was thinking to myself then that I am going to regret this for what I thought it was going to be,a dull 0-0 scoreline which to be honest,wouldn’t have been a bad result at all. I mean,the Stade Valedrome is always an intimidating place to go to and a point would not harm our chances of qualifying. Djourou came on for the injured Carl Jenkinson,who put in an admirable shift it must be said,Gervinho for Walcott,who was shit and Ramsey for Arshavin,who was shit as well. But it didn’t seem to change anything and I was slowly acclimatizing myself with the result when BAM! Djourou lays a dangerous cross into the box which is miscontrolled by Gervinho and falls to Ramsey at the far post. Goal! In the 91st fucking minute! Everything changes. Now we come away with 3 points,we go top of the table and unless some major fuckery happens,we have a very realistic chance of winning the group. In addition,we gain some much needed confidence ahead of Sunday’s game against the trolls. Huge huge result. It’s amazing how the mood can change in an instant. That should teach me to think prospectively about things in retrospect.

We’ve won 5 out of the last 6 games now and even though,there’s a lot we can improve on,we seemed to have atleast pulled ourselves out of the hole that we dug for ourselves over the summer. Forward!

Contrary to popular belief,I haven’t forgotten about this blog. Yet. It’s also unlikely that it’ll happen this season. Wait..what’s that? Eh? I can’t hear you. Well,I can hardly hear you when so many of you ask questions at the same time now,can I? *shakes head at plight of human race*

Oh..Why won’t I forget this blog,you ask? Well,for one I love drowning in all this attention you guys seem to be giving me(973 hits.SCORE!). Secondly,its fun watching Arsenal again. Given,it’s not perfect yet..but we showed flashes of brilliance which really,I had lost almost all hope of witnessing until January. Obviously,we needed RvP to salvage us in the end. Again. Seriously,what a man..If I was somewhere at the top of the Arsenal hierarchy,I would create the Gooner Nobel Peace Prize just for him. Without him,we would be at each others throats,trying our best to slash them(with pen-knives) just because we differ on whether Wenger should stay or not. (This would largely happen over Twitter because,as you may well know,we have discovered telekinesis) Why aren’t we doing it now,I hear you say..If you were a hot girl,I would nod and invite you over to my place. I cleaned it recently. It’s much more..agreeable.

Speaking of sex,I had this dream yesterday which resulted in me jizzing my pants. (Fuck you,if you had the dream I did,you would too..) So,as far as I can recollect now,Mick Jagger kept nagging me to buy his Some Girls re-issue.(It’s out a month later..JEEZ!) and as a reward,I think it was,took me to a room with this really smokin’ hot chick and loud Stones music in the background. Then,as you can and probably don’t want to imagine,I have smokin’ hot sex with the smokin’ hot chick and the room goes all blurry and colourful. I know,it was hot..

Anyway,I digress. My point is our season would have been,dare I imagine it,much much worse without Van Persie. That turn and chip with his weaker foot was totally jizz-worthy. Pity it didn’t go in but I want to concentrate on something else today..Rosicky and Arshavin. I’ve always liked creative players and you could say that with Cesc and Nasri gone and Jack injured,the main burden would be on these two to provide that. And I wouldn’t blame you for balking at that. Rosicky has never been the same since spending close to two seasons at the treatment table and Arshavin has been..well..invisible. But what can be easily forgotten is that these are two top top players. (There’s my Wenger impression of the day) Rosicky was very good for us when he joined,banging them in from all distances and generally being extremely awesome. If only we had him fit and at his peak all these years..Just ask Nuri Sahin who his idol was while growing up as a ball-boy at Dortmund. This season,however,Rosicky seems to have found an extra gear or something. Running past defenders,turning every microsecond,that pass to Gervinho leading to RvP’s goal within 25 seconds..His performance really fills me with hope.

I have a little theory on Arshavin. I don’t have the stats to back me up but I think his form dropped because he was pretty devastated when Russia failed to qualify for the WC. He was in his late twenties and you could probably understand how much he wanted to show people that he was one of the most talented players in the world at the biggest stage. Last season he started really well,giving assists all over the place but somehow that petered out..But now that Russia have qualified for the Euro Championships,I somehow feel he is pretty focused on playing well for Arsenal. His recent interview seems to be good evidence of that. If you need more..well..take a look at this :

Pure class..

So yeah,even though it wasn’t the best win you could hope for,under the circumstances,it was vitally important that we did. We scored from a set piece too,so that was pretty cool..It’s been a while. RvP is easily the best striker in the PL if not the world,right now and there’s hope for Arshavin and Rosicky yet. Our defence was alright,especially Mertesacker who seems to be gelling in rather well. Our mentality can be worrying however. Academy graduate Seb Larsson alluded to the lack of fear when teams play Arsenal and you can see why. After he scored,well,we were close to imploding. Carl Jenkinson gave the ball away in the worst possible position and if it wasn’t for Szczesny/a poor header,things could have been a lot different..To Jenkinson’s credit,he came back very well in the second half and put a lot of decent crosses in. He ain’t so bad at it,is he? Gibbs’ substitution reaffirmed my belief that our players just have the weirdest bodies ever when Wenger attributed it to a “stomach muscle inflammation”. Really,what kind of injury is that?! And,how did he even get it?! Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe someone dropped some heavy weights on his stomach or he ate some of our hostel food. Still,he played pretty well and it’s good to see hard competition for the LB spot. Won’t be much if Santos keeps taking free-kicks,however. Disgraceful.

The weekend turned out to be quite a good one in the end. Liverpool and Spurs dropped points,we are upto 10th in the table with just 4 points separating us and Liverpool. I slept pretty peacefully. Well,some of it was violent. *wink*

Aaaand what else..well,I guess the Rome derby deserves a shout-out as well. Klose! So typical..Not the best with the ball at his feet,but he’ll give you goals and they don’t get much bigger than a last minute winner against your arch-rivals..whom you haven’t beaten for the last two years! Lazio are a reasonably good team,by which I mean,I’ve heard of most of their players and fully deserved the win against a Roma side still finding its feet. With a little help from the referee though..Simon Kjaer’s red card will and always will be a very dodgy decision that no one in their right mind would make in such a huge game.

Also,Pablo Osvaldo,not a very good idea man..

Well,that felt absolute shit..So much so that I would never expect to be reliving it for such a thing as a blog which,you may know,is an extremely sad way to spend one’s life..But I am. Such are the ways of the world..

It all started thus :

——Start of Long and Winding Analogy————

There I was,taking a dump after lessening the pain from the defeat by sitting through hours of extremely monotonous football which just happened to have late goals and a “Rob Green”,a technique developed by,you guessed it,Rob Green..If you still don’t know what I am referring to,you should probably stop reading now..There’s going to be a lot more from where that came from. Anyway,so there I was,taking a dump (Boring football matches and junk food go well together) and thinking about well..the process,it occured to me that the only thing indicative of how your life is going is whether your..ahem..dumping feels good or not. Seriously,if you’ve had a good dump,it just lights up your whole day..The day stretches out in all its glory,full of possibilities and so on..You have total freedom from the one thing that is so annoying about being human. We could have evolved to be able to remove all that digestive waste in so many imaginable ways and we ended up with this. Don’t fish have pores from where all the waste disperses into the water in much less disgusting compound structures? I’d much rather have those. And to think we evolved from fish in the first place! Natural Selection should have a clause which allows not only fit genes to survive but also those which have a propensity to not do disgusting things..I don’t think they are very open to debate though.

Anyway,as I was saying,having a good dump is a vital vital thing..The hippies were wrong,drugs don’t free your mind..a good dump does. As you can imagine,I was having a very bad dump at that moment and I was struck by the familiarity of the feeling. It felt eerily like..

<Suspense>

<More Suspense>

Arsenal losing to Tottenham.

——–End of Long and Winding Analogy———–

As for the game itself,it was one of them Arsenal performances which are steadily becoming the trend this season..One where you can’t point to a particular player and say,well,you just cost us the game..Almunia’s out on loan to West Ham,Squillaci has well..disappeared,so it’s obvious why that has changed. While it might seem like a good thing,it doesn’t change the fact that we lost the game. Ramsey was shit and so was Walcott,but not in a way that particularly threatened Szczesny. They weren’t responsible for the loss per se. The defenders couldn’t be solely blamed either,except as usual,for the goals. Those lapses will cause some major heart ailments some day. Mertesacker got some good tackles in and Song generally handled Adebayor well,Gibbs was one of our better players and Sagna was,and forever may it continue,Sagna..We’ve come far from Ewood Park,I guess. You could say we definitely need more of the bite of old,those wonderful attacking thrusts,like waves of red and white leaving the opposition in its wake gasping for air..That was pretty much all we had. Our luck is,as it has been in recent memory,pretty shit. Sagna being the latest entrant to an injury list that is so long,there’s no point counting it anymore.. Again,in recent memory,we’ve never been lucky with referee decisions..Van Der Vaart clearly handled the ball but no one spotted it and he scored just when we seemed to be getting a good foothold in the game. Ramsey pulled it back after the break but Kyle Walker scored an absolute screamer from pretty far out. Szczesny should have probably saved it but if I end up blaming Szczesny for our loss,then I permit you to flog me a hundred times for spreading filth in a world already neck deep in it. Danny Rose’s legacy is going to haunt us for a long time,methinks. And that was that..we couldn’t really create anything after that,even when Benayoun and Arshavin came on. Our attack was as toothless as err..something (the yang of the yin that is the sabre tooth tiger?). News reports later claiming Sagna’s fibula has been Vermaelen’d rounded up a perfectly shit day. No wait,the dump did.

Its already Monday too..you really couldn’t make this shit up.

Pun not intended one bit..

I haven’t been very active on here recently. I don’t really know why. I like blogging. It’s a fun pastime when there are things to talk about. But I guess there are moments when talking seems pointless. Sometimes even so when there are a lot of things going on in my head. Football has been shit. I was looking forward to seeing Arsenal turn the corner finally and they were as disappointing as anything in memory recently. The joy of scoring 2 goals at Old Trafford was followed by a feeling of turning-the-corner-ness at home and in Germany. The place was buzzing. New signings,signs of stability,doggedness. This was a new Arsenal. One that probably wouldn’t have offered a visual masterpiece very often but one that would nonetheless fight it out and give it their all for a cause that had largely been brought upon itself. But no one gives away a lead quite like Arsenal. There’s something tragically funny about how the defence shoots itself in the foot even when the rest of the team are actually doing rather well. If I was an Arsenal defender and I was searching for something to be confident about,well,I mean..Arshavin was playing well! That must have been something. Gervinho looked a world beater,the midfield was fluid and incisive,Sagna was,as always,flawless..Enough positives to fill a shop but somehow it all went horribly wrong. I don’t want to be very pessimistic but I will not pretend to profess that there is something that can be done here. If there is,I wouldn’t know about it. Maybe a defensive coach will help. Steve Bould has been waiting in the ranks for quite some time and even if I haven’t had the opportunity to see him play as I had more pressing issues at hand,such as being able to navigate through my mom’s cervical linings which as I recall wasn’t a very pleasant experience(NOPE! NOT ONE BIT!),he’s still an Arsenal defender who played under George Graham . If Cruyff wanted to teach your team about the nuances of Total Football you would be disinclined to turn him down now,wouldn’t you?

I feel there’s more to it than that however. What’s scary is that Arsenal are in a situation where it’s no more about what can be done but rather if anything is being done at all. And that’s what I am trying to get at when I say talking seems pointless. I love Wenger,I worship the man. But his press conference after the game was as damning as anything I have seen over the years. Maybe it’s a sign that he’s finally recognized the defensive frailties regarding organization and focus and all that that this team tends to exhibit,but I find it hard to believe that a man of his intelligence wouldn’t have already known about it. Does he consider it unnecessary? How can any football manager,let alone one of Wenger’s capabilities,consider the defensive aspects of the game unnecessary? Arsenal had the longest Champions League run without conceding,the Invincibles were as impenetrable at the back as they were devastating going forward. All brought together by Wenger.

I have a ton of questions. No answers. For now I am content waiting this one out,really hoping that the team can pull itself out of this mess. Just that,sit and hope..Whether I am going to enjoy the ride or not doesn’t even matter now,I feel stuck.