So Arsenal go out of another cup in the sort of way we are accustomed to these days. Knocked out in a one - nil home defeat to league one team Blackburn. It was a complete shambles, there was a lack of care about the match that the manager, the players and everyone at the club really need pulling up on. We should have been going into this match as pumped up and as switched on as possible. This is the 5th round of the FA Cup, the next round is a quarter final! Take it a bit seriously lads and you might just win something!
I appreciate that at the beginning of the season when you measure up the cups and rate them accordingly the FA Cup is probably 3rd in favour, but this season it represented the best chance of gaining any trophy. The manager sent out a team who looked like they had forgotten that to win matches you have to score goals. Not win corners, not dominate possession, not pass the ball across the back four repeatedly until the 60,000 (yeah right) people in the stadium fall off their chairs with boredom. You have to stick the ball in the net. Like Blackburn did with 100% accuracy. one shot, one goal. simples.
The club appears happy to finish in the top four each season and the feeling is that a top four finish is enough to keep the board happy and the coffers lined with lots of cash. The trouble is that the message is spreading to the team and while a top four finish is enough for some it is not enough for others. Others like Cesc, Robin, Samir...... Jack? The Diaby’s, Rosicky's, Gervinho’s, Arshavin’s of this world are probably more than happy to toe the line and aim for a top four finish, picking up their massive pay package on the way. But what if they under achieve in their under achievement? What if we aim for 4th, miss and finish 5th? or 6th?
“The club wont be able to attract top footballers as they want to play in the champions league”, I hear you saying. We never sign those players anyway. And surely a top footballer will know that Arsenal have been in the champions league consistently for a million billion gazillion years without ever winning the damn thing. That Arsenal are a club who’s ambitions are to get into the top four so we get champions league revenue but lets get knocked out of all the cup competitions so as not to stretch ourselves too thinly so we don’t make the top four again next year.
Its depressing to watch. I cant remember if I read it, or if it came up in conversation with another Arsenal fan, but it is like watching someone you know and love slowly die of a hideous disease and there is nothing you can do to help.
Every area of our team looks worse than it did year on year. We are getting weaker and the disease is spreading deeper. The players have caught it, the manager has become so accustomed to it it has become part of his character. The board have given in to it/ promoted it / cashed in on it / got rich off it. Now even the fans seem to have it. There were lots of empty seats on Saturday and the atmosphere was flatter than I can remember it for some time. This was a match we should have been going out to win. A competition we should have been excited about. But at the end of the match there was a chorus of boos much louder than any of the cheers in the match.
Sorry for this blog being so negative, we have another cup match tomorrow night against Bayern Munich in the champions league. I was really excited about the match, watching your team play the best opponents is what football at this level is all about. I just hope we are not completely exposed. Before the Blackburn match I thought that on our day we could beat anyone. Having been knocked out of another cup to a lower league team shows we can also be beaten by anyone. Bayern are not “anyone” and we will need to be completely on our game to get anything other than a humiliation.
I really hope we manage to have a performance we can be proud of. But it would have seen that performance on Saturday.
We will be back with a podcast for tomorrows match, I am playing football for our 6 a side team later so I guess that might have an effect on how up beat the pod is... Fingers crossed for a win and a happy go lucky recording.
See ya later...
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