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Victory Through Harmony

By Walter Broeckx

Yes I think it is Wenger his fault. Every time we lose a game. Oops we didn’t lose the game, we actually won the game.  So every game people come out to tell us how poor we are. People come out to tell us what a stupid manager we have.  Or use even more abusive words. Win or lose, they will come out from the moment we haven’t trashed the opponents.

And apart from the supporters from other teams who come on Arsenal blogs and pretend to be Arsenal supporters and who give abuse to our players and managers, we have a part of the fans who also do this.

First let us get some facts straight. Arsenal is the only club in the EPL who is in for 4 trophies this season. Arsenal is still in the title race in the EPL, we play the final of the Carling Cup, we are still in the FA cup and we are still in the Champions League. I know some of those telling us our players are useless and Wenger knows nothing about football have given up on  the Champions League. Well I’m not one of those. Every game has to be played. And a bad day for Barcelona can happen. And a good day from Arsenal can also happen. It will be the form on the days that will decide this game.

So we still are in 4 competitions. Manchester United are not, Chelsea are not, Manchester City are not, and certainly our still nearby neighbours aren’t .  No just the useless Arsenal manager and his no good players are still in it for 4. Yes, this make  sense. Does it?

And now let us turn our attention on today’s game against Huddersfield.  Yes it was a scrappy affair. Certainly when Nasri got injured and then Squillaci got his red card. From that moment on it was a very scrappy affair. I will not deny this.

But at the end of the day we won. And so our “useless” players did what they had to do: win.  So instead of being happy some bemoan the performance. Well in the first half hour we were well on top. We missed the early chances and made life a bit difficult for ourselves. But as long as we were with 11 players on the field we had the game in control. We created chances, which we mostly missed.

Let us compare this with the “benchmark” team, Manchester United. They were losing to Southampton until the 65^th minute. And then they won in the end. Will the United supporters ask for SAF to be sacked? No they will say: we won at the end  and that is what matters.

Yes we have been spoiled. We want our players not only to win but to win it in style. We want to win and trash the opposition. And if our players don’t do it like that we start to moan and complain. And in fact we should be happy. As in the last season when we didn’t play at our best we just lost our games most of the times.  So winning in the United way (I’m not saying United always wins like that but just look at their wins against Blackpool and Southampton) should make us feel happy. We can win games without playing our best football for a large part of the game.

I think this is great. I can remember some fans moaning about the fact that we couldn’t dig out results in the last seasons when playing not at our best. Well we just have done this. So why now suddenly demand that we play the opposition off the pitch each time? It just doesn’t work that way.

Footballers are human beings. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.  Sometimes you have a great day and sometimes you don’t.  And when you have a not so great day then the only thing we can ask for is a win. And a win we got.

A win in the United way is as good a win as a win in the Arsenal champagne football way. It will only get us to 3 points or will in this case only get us in the next round. If we would have won 5-0 we still only would be in the next round against Leyton Orient and we wouldn’t be automatically have a place in the final already.

And I would have liked us to win in style and with a high score. But at the end of the day we are in the FA cup in the next round and that is all that matters.

For a large part the moaning is Wenger’s own fault. He has given us so many games with such great football that we take it for granted that we win all our games in that way.  So maybe Wenger shouldn’t have given us such a great team and such a wonderful football most of the time. He should have played the long ball football and hoof it in the air style. If that would have been the case in his reign we would have just enjoyed the win and forget the rest.

So yes Wenger is to blame. But not for a bad game. Wenger is to blame for spoiling us with great football.

And maybe we can blame Wenger also when he can field 8 fresh players against Everton who haven’t played today or only a small part of the game. Maybe we should remember when we start on Tuesday with players like Szczesny, Sagna, Djourou, Clichy, Cesc, Wilshere, Song, Van Persie, Walcott who have had a rest this weekend. In fact this is 9 players but as Cesc and Song have played a bit I will count them for one.

Also take note that Arsenal is yet again the ONLY team that has to play their games with only one day full rest in between matches. This is the second time we have to do this (also Chelsea had this last time, not now) and I wonder how the FA and EPL can explain this. Once can be a coincidence. Twice? Well this looks a bit much. So Wenger had to take a gamble on one game. He did this today. And it worked out and would have been a comfortable win if Nasri would have stayed fit.

So this Gooner is a happy gooner. Still in 4 competitions. My fellow Gooners, what do you want more?

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