What a waste of time « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade
By Walter Broeckx
Oh the joy but also the sadness at times of being an Arsenal (and more in general) and/or football supporter and in my case a blog writer. Sometimes you can write the victory bulletins and sometimes you have to announce defeat. That is the way it goes. That is the way it always has been (and apart from the invincible era) it always will be. You win some and then suddenly when least expected you lose one.
I think we started good in the first minutes with some good attacks and a first chance…and then it all went horribly wrong. I even said to my son when Wigan started their counter that something was wrong with Arteta and seconds later the ball was in the net for Wigan. Arteta clearly couldn’t carry on and before Ramsey could get on the field we were 0-2 down. A rather lucky goal as the ball rebounded between Djourou and Vermaelen and fell very kindly for the Wigan player. But that is how it goes sometimes when it isn’t your day.
What then followed was a bit of one way traffic. The Wigan time keeper was in excellent form. Oh I meant goal keeper of course. Or both. Never mind. The header from Benayoun was bound to go in but what a magnificent save. One can but admire it. He couldn’t do anything when Vermaelen headed the Arsenal goal with a powerful header. We had enough chances to equalise in the first half but it didn’t come.
After about half an hour my match commentator started noticing that the Wigan time keeper was taking well rather a lot of time to bring the ball back in to play each time he had to do it. And he kept on doing this for the rest of the game. I had noticed it since they went 0-2 up. The ref only noticed it in the 92th minute and then produced a yellow card. I must say that handing out this card cost around more than a minute of stoppage time itself. Which wasn’t added on. But a nice move from the ref to put the match assessors in a comfortable seat and now he can say “he did something about it”. Too little, too late comes to mind.
Now before you start scrolling down the page to the comment section and start telling me that I’m looking for excuses: I’m not. I’m readily to admit that we played not our best game at all. But I really cannot enjoy football being played in that way. I have always hated the Italian football style cattanacio with my whole heart. Defending with the whole team and then breaking on the counter and trying to win the game. I just cannot stand such football. It is what I saw from Wigan. So forgive me not joining in the “what a great game Wigan played”. I found it disgusting when the Italians won world titles like that (doesn’t matter against which team) and I really cannot understand that this type of football gets any credit at all. Maybe I am too much a pure football lover that loves to see both teams playing the game. So if you want to blame me for anything: blame me for loving pure and attacking football. I’m in the same opinion as Cruyff is in this. Not that bad a company I think.
I’m not going in to the details but the ref was strange. As if he wanted the game to slow down. Whenever Arsenal wanted to take a quick free kick even deep in their own half for an offside the ref called it back because the ball was one yard away from the place where the foul occurred. He seemed to be very narrow-minded on that. On the other hand I remember a Wigan player in the second half running about 10 meters with the ball behind his head to take a throw and stealing some 15 meters in total (if not more) and the ref let it go. Wigan almost scored from this situation.
You could clearly see it getting on the nerves of a few Arsenal players the way the ref slowed things down. And the blind eye for the time wasting added to the feeling of a ref that was not really doing what he should be doing. People always like to give credit to a ref when “he keeps the game flowing”. This ref clearly managed to get all the speed out of the game for the whole 90 minutes.
We never really recovered from the loss of Arteta. It affected Song and Rosicky who had a not that good game. In fact it affected the whole team as Arteta is the person who is here and there and everywhere helping out his team mates. this just shows what an important player Arteta has become for Arsenal.
Like I said you lose some, you win some. That is football. It makes me sad when we lose and the way we played left me frustrated. It wasn’t good enough. We can do better. But we played a team that parked the bus once they were 0-2 up and we couldn’t remove the bus in time. (Now that is good one I like to think myself). So after the final whistle I was sad and angry. A bit of a mixture because our bad performance and angry because of the ref not doing his job and do something about the time wasting. Does anyone have access to the stats about how long the ball was actually in play? I sure would like to now. I could check it myself but it will take some time I think.
Now I am on twitter but I am not that much of a twitterer. A few messages at times. A few questions or remarks on the guy from the PGMOL who is on twitter. But being on twitter means that you get to see other messages. And my god what a bunch of twats (can I use that word Tony?) [no sorry Walter, you can’t] are on twitter.
A bunch of twats [yellow card Walter, you have been warned] are determined to drive Ramsey away from Arsenal. They wish him all kinds of diseases and broken legs. How low can you get? Those so called Arsenal fans (residents from LG???) are really despicable. How on earth can you do such things. Well my dear twats [right that’s it once more and you are off] I’m a very peaceful person who doesn’t want anyone to get his leg broken or to get a life threatening disease. I guess they are young and ignorant and don’t know how such things can affect a person and a human life.
But such things made me so angry that for the first time in my life I wish something bad to another person. So I can only whish that what they wished that would happen to Aaron Ramsey happens to themselves. May you rot in hell for those remarks aimed at this young man. You are the dirt bags of Arsenal and maybe they were the bin bags protesters?
So taking the defeat on the chin is one thing we must do. And hope that just as against QPR we can come out in the next game and produce a performance like we did against Manchester City. Let us just beat the system on Saturday and in unity we should be able to overcome the system.
Victoria Concordia Crescit.
PS: On second thought I will not lower myself to the levels of the twats on twitter. I just wish they would grow a brain cell. Only one. Would make a big difference for them. [Right, that’s it Walter, you’re off]