Make your preparations for St Totteringham`s day. « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

By Mahdi Khamis

WOW what a match.

Truth be told I’m over the moon at the moment and I am sure I am not the only one that went absolute mental when that second goal went in.

Not sure if words are enough to describe my man crush on Vermaelen. Did you see that run? That’s what is called passion and desire and it wasn’t only him. Remember when they told us we didn’t have desire, passion or fighting spirit? And our captain and vice captain scored in the same match not bad for a team that doesn’t have leaders eh?

And did I mentioned we made history by becoming the first team in PL era to come back from a goal down (or two in the case of the Tottenham game) to win in 4 consecutive matches? How`s that for team spirit and mental strength?

Now I’m not gonna go too deep about the match.   Walter does that, and he is the best at that.

But before I proceed any further I would like to bring all your attention to this article I wrote two months or so back as this article is a follow up for that one. It was about spuds and why we didn’t need to worry about them too much

http://blog.emiratesstadium.info/archives/18007

Now when I wrote that article(13^th January) the league table for top 4 race was looking like this

#	TEAM	P	GD	PTS
3	Tottenham H	20	18	45
4	Chelsea	20	14	37
5	Arsenal	20	8	36
6	Liverpool	20	6	34
7	Newcastle	20	4	33

There we were 9 points adrift our dear neighbours and while we were fighting for top 4 spot apparently they had become tittle contenders(LOL). Now how did things go after that? Well I’m gonna break it down for each team. I`ll get to us in a moment but lets start with the others first.

Liverpool

Well they won a trophy and are no longer our trophyless buddies  …oh who am I kidding?  Liverpool have been total shambles on and off the pitch. Their handling of Suarez saga was nothing short of disgrace and they have kept firing blanks and never really look that exciting as the media told us when they were spending stupid money.

And speaking Liverpool I wonder if Ollie Holt still stands by the comments he made on twitter after their fluke win against us? You know the one about that being a win for a club that has ambition and moved forward against the one that has no ambition and has moved backwards?

Liverpool`s form since hasn’t been that great. They have collected 5 points from 7 games with 1W 2D 4L and they currently sit in 7^th 13 points from 4^th and any of the top four hopes should be over.   Luckily for them they have already qualified for Europa via the Carling cup or it would have been another season without Europe for the ambitious wise club.

Newcastle

I wont go too deep with them. They have been showing a bit of consistency though they did get hammerings from spuds (5-0) and fulham (5-2) and also got Verminated. During this time they have collected 11 points and their form is 3W 2D 3L and they sit in 6^th with 44pts

 Chelsea

Well they have been themselves. Roman decided to sack yet another manager and as usual its once the senior players that many blame for getting AVB sacked. Its such a shame as he really has great potential and I’m sure he will succeed at any other club he goes. Roman Abramovich has once again shown he has no football knowledge whatsoever and of course loves burning his own money considering how much it cost him to bring AVB to Chelsea in the first place.

On the pitch well Chelsea have collected 12 points and their form is 3W 3D 2L. They are still in top 4 contention so definitely need to keep an eye on.

Tottenham

Well well well look what we have here…if it isn’t our lovely neighbours. You know the one who have forever been in our shadows? The one who always say they`ll finish above us season in season out? The one and only Premier League entertainers and of course the media darlings.

Truth be told prior to when they came visiting they were being all cocky and telling us to mind the gap (which? Trophies? 51 years since they won the league, our 14 consecutive years in CL? or the new stadium?). Oh they were talking about the points gap and rightly so as it was 13 up to the 39^th min of a certain game. What happened next? To quote Martin Tyler, “Tottenham do not know what hit em. Well I can tell you its Theo Walcott”. Okay actually Arsenal happened as we sent them down crashing to the ground and put them in their rightful place.

There was a lot of talk prior to the derby about the supposed power shift in North London and how spuds were now better than us and all of that sort. One Henry Winter had the audacity of writing an article saying that only RVP would start in spuds team and how the rest of their players are better than us. Surprised? Yes he did say Walker was better than Sagna. LOL at him. I don’t think I have to go on about that match as I am sure many of us still remember it as if it was yesterday and why shouldn’t we? It was our supposedly worst team in 15yrs vs their best in 50yrs.

In this time spuds have collected 8 points and no longer do they have that tittle contenders tag. Their form? They had started to lose ground before we mauled them but I can say it was us who triggered the slide. 2W 2D 4L and it really looks like their bubble is starting to bust. We can only hope the normality is continued to be restored and they continue to lose. Their one time 13 points gap has been now cut down to 1 point. Mind the gap? what gap?  They better look out for their backs as we are coming for that 3^rd spot.

Arsenal

Well we had a disastrous January where we didn’t pick up a single point. Things we not looking good and as you can imagine the AAA did what they do best by adding fuel to fire calling for the manager`s sacking and the usual phrases that we are all aware of them. Well January passed and February came and our fortunes changed.

We started getting players back from injury even though we had a major loss due to the BFG(Mertesacker) injury.

We drew at Bolton before mauling Blackburn, get a hard fought win at Sunderland and their pathetic pitch before giving the tinnies a lesson. Then we went to conduct a daylight robbery at Anfield before Verminating Newcastle and their pathetic hoofball and time wasting tactics.

5W 1D OL and 16pts not bad, not bad at all considering the awful start of the year we had.

The AAA have seem to shut up a little even though they did have their moments during this time after that defeat in Milan and their groundsmen and losing to Sunderland.  One can only imagine they are sharpening their blades lurking with intent and waiting to pounce. I really do hope we don’t give them the chance to do so and continue with our great form and get that 3^rd spot as it is vital for next season.

So where are we now in terms of the league table?

#	TEAM	P	GD	PTS
3	Tottenham H	28	18	53
4	Arsenal	28	18	52
5	Chelsea	28	16	49
6	Newcastle	28	-1	44
7	Liverpool	27	4	39

We pretty much are in the driving seat for the 4^th spot and to make things better 3^rd is now in reach. However lets not get carried away just yet.  I am sure PGMO still have something up their sleeves that could hurt us. There are City and Chelsea matches which Dowd will certainly be getting one of.  I also worry that are gonna get him at least twice in the run in. Dreading the thought of that. We also have Probert who has emerged as a dark horse to succeed master Riley so I am sure he will do whatever it takes to enhance his CV.

Something also tells me we haven’t seen the last of Webb and Dean just yet even though they have already ref`d 4 matches for us each in the league this season. Disgusting when you think about it really. I mean getting refs for FIVE times in one season alone? The PGMO select pool has 18 refs and there are 38 matches which means we should be getting each ref twice which equals to 36 matches which means we should only be getting two refs for more than two times but alas that’s not the case because of the supposed “random” selection. Yeah right that would explain why we keep getting Dowd, Dean and Webb up to four times while the likes of Friend, Taylor and Jones are yet to ref any of our league matches this season. I`m sure refs will be a huge obstacle but as we have shown recently we can overcome and defeat them if we just refuse to let them screw us over and fight to the last.

But if we stick together and SUPPORT our team, providing a great atmosphere and NOT booing when things don’t go our way then we wont need to play any CL qualifiers next season as 3^rd will be ours. Oh and don’t forget to make your preparations for St Totteringham`s day. Make no mistake about it as it is happening.