UNTOLD ARSENAL » 2008 » November » 09

Of course no one needs me to say that yesterday at the Ems everything was lovely – apart from the fact that I lost my voice (which of course is irrelevant).  The guy behind us apologised to my partner at the end of the game for his language which basically managed to use the f-word, c-word and quite possibly some x y and z words as pronouns, nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs and prepositions.  It was that sort of occasion.

All credit to the guy – he managed to keep it up for all 96 minutes, and his only moan vis a vis Arsenal was about Bendtner – who was frustrating I’ll admit.

But we had it all – the desire, skill, quality, passion, noise.  Even Sir Alex F-Word was restrained as far as I could see from the opposite side of the stadium.  Maybe all those extra stewards he asked for had put glue on his seat so he could leap onto the pitch as he did last season.

And to tell the truth we had some of the same quality against a much poorer Fenebache team.  The difference between the goal and the miss is fractional – and in  midweek the chances didn’t go in.  Yesterday we had far fewer chances (the Bankrupts had more shots than we did) but it all worked.   Last wednesday any one of half a dozen shots could have gone in.  Because they didn’t the crowd got quiet, and we were outshouted continuously by the Turks.

So, where are we now?

The club is not falling apart, we are still six points of the lead, and there are many occasions when we can play the most wonderful elegant football in the universe and end up scoring and winning.  We can do it against the top teams (and lets put all our emotions aside for a second and recognise that a team containing Ronaldo, Rooney and Berbatov is a team with a sensational forward line – and that’s ignoring Tevez who can also be brilliant), and we can do it against Blackburn, Bolton and the like.

It’s just we have let it slip a few times – and we just need to stop doing that.  Really it is not quantum mechanics – and I have no doubt Wenger can put it right with the team he has.

Denilson is looking like he is meant to be there, Theo is stunning, and Nasri is Pires II – which is exactly what we have been waiting for.   Diaby is remarkably back to what we saw when he first came – I must say I thought he had lost it forever.  But he is an extraordinary player, and I think we’ll see a lot more of him.   Ramsey was brilliant plus brilliant plus brilliant against the Turks, and Bischoff is coming good in the Reserves.  Hopefully he’ll play this coming week.

If only we could generate the passion and noise and enthusiasm that we have seen from Fenerbache supporters – that would be good, because I think we are getting a side that deserves far more support.

Maybe yesterday people might have realised at the end that the world doesn’t end if you wait for the final whistle.   We stayed – as seemingly did most people, and we cheered the last red shirt off the pitch.  Then my partner and I wended our way out from the upper tier, walked to Arsenal tube and got a seat on the underground.  It took no more than 20 minutes for us to get from our seats to geting on the train.  Is that too much to ask people to do?

Enough rambling – but there is one mor thing.  There were some great points made yesterday by commentators to this blog.  It may sound silly and naff but I genuinely feel honoured that anyone should take up their own time to respond to stuff I write here, and of course I read everything written with much interest and do consider it.

There are several points in recent posts that I will come back on but there was one point about the way the site is moderated that I wanted to mention.

I take the point that for a comment to appear you have to wait for me to get back to the site to post it.  Yesterday (saturday) I was out from 9am, going to the game, and then eventually on to a friends for an evening meal out, getting back home at midnight – so no moderation until 11am sunday.  Yes it does stop any flow and correspondence.

But among the 10 or so comments waiting for moderation were several spam emails.  Some days there are long tirades against me calling me a racist – and I don’t really want to publish either sort of comment.

So, what I will do is try and find a way to ban from publication people who fall into either category, and then make the commentary unmoderated for a while, just to see.

Again, thanks for reading.

Tony