Despair and depression on the football field
There's nothing better than the ecstatic euphoria of scoring a goal against Chelsea - the noise, the rush of blood, the realisation that you are on top of the game. There's nothing worse than the deathly hush that descends on the stadium full of home fans when Chelsea scores against you. The Highbury Library indeed. You could have heard a pin drop in the North Bank while at the far end, the small away enclosure was full of figures jumping up and down, yelling to bridge the distance.
Unfortunately the euphoria of the goal was an illusory pleasure, as it was disallowed, wrongly, for off-side. And we had to endure two of those dreadful, shivery moments of despair and silence. I'd never heard the stadium so quiet.
What to say? Arseblog did, I think, get it entirely right. We needed big performances from the older team members - Sol and Thierry - and they were both quiet. Dennis, when he came on towards the end of the game when it was already too late, added a dash of energy and created one good chance but apart from him, it was the young ones who threw themselves into the game. I worried about van Persie who got two bad knocks early on, but he always looked bright; Cesc and Flamini I thought also did pretty well and so did Senderos.
There just wasn't confidence in our play - we lost the ball too often and we got no fluency with our positioning at all. Chelsea behaved imperiously and showed the arrogance which has won them the league, which makes them untouchable right now. We know about that because there was a time when Arsenal looked that confident and at home in every stadium. But yesterday afternoon we looked, apart from a couple of short periods in the middle of the first half and just after the break, insecure.
All in all, a very depressing afternoon. Our league season is basically over and we're in the mid-table wilds. Come on Real!!
Unfortunately the euphoria of the goal was an illusory pleasure, as it was disallowed, wrongly, for off-side. And we had to endure two of those dreadful, shivery moments of despair and silence. I'd never heard the stadium so quiet.
What to say? Arseblog did, I think, get it entirely right. We needed big performances from the older team members - Sol and Thierry - and they were both quiet. Dennis, when he came on towards the end of the game when it was already too late, added a dash of energy and created one good chance but apart from him, it was the young ones who threw themselves into the game. I worried about van Persie who got two bad knocks early on, but he always looked bright; Cesc and Flamini I thought also did pretty well and so did Senderos.
There just wasn't confidence in our play - we lost the ball too often and we got no fluency with our positioning at all. Chelsea behaved imperiously and showed the arrogance which has won them the league, which makes them untouchable right now. We know about that because there was a time when Arsenal looked that confident and at home in every stadium. But yesterday afternoon we looked, apart from a couple of short periods in the middle of the first half and just after the break, insecure.
All in all, a very depressing afternoon. Our league season is basically over and we're in the mid-table wilds. Come on Real!!
Comments
Henry was nowhere (marked out of the game? I don't think so, so what's his excuse?).
Wenger has rightly admitted that Arsenal are 'light' in the midfield. Far too evident yesterday. Sorry, they didn't deserve to win (even if the did have a goal chalked off for no reason... but then as Robbo at the Beeb said, Henry could at least have TRIED to get back onside!)
Sepp Blatter has called for a limit on international players... yet I think that would hit Arsenal harder than Chelsea at the moment!