Fairly typical season for Arsenal so far - already out of the title race but well set for Champions League qualification and not much else besides.
In their last home match, against Newcastle, Arsenal were everything Arsenal should be: swift, dynamic, slick and totally uncontrollable. Newcastle were everything Newcastle often are away from home: useless, feckless, disinterested. The Gunners glided into a three goal lead before the hour mark and, at that stage, it looked like it could be anything they wanted.
What they wanted, as it turned out, was to piss about for half an hour, trying an extra pass or three instead of a shot. Eventually, with a couple of minutes to go, and the game won, they were awarded a penalty. Santi Cazorla stepped up against rookie, 21-year-old goalkeeper Jak Alnwick, making only his second ever Premier League start, and decided to humiliate the kid — waiting for him to guess a direction and then chipping the ball down the middle.
Ahhhh what a team. What a player. Everybody always did love Santi Cazorla. How quickly can we get a Vine of that goal up on the Sport Bible?
A goal's a goal. A win's a win. You look after your own team, and who cares about some youthful third choice Newcastle keeper?
Like I say, it rather summed up the modern day Arsenal for me. Flat track bullies.
Just a week earlier they'd been up on the windy hill at Stoke, and neither Cazorla nor any of his team mates were quite as brave with their penalty kicks or anything else there. In fact, they were three nil down at half time. The performance of Per Mertesacker - a 100-capped German international centre half and World Cup winner — at the Britannia Stadium channelled Gus Caeser.
That's Arsenal. Happily tippy tapping about, rolling over the division's easier sides by three or four goals, only to shrivel and wilt whenever the going gets slightly tough. They've already played Manchesters City and United, Chelsea and Liverpool this season and they've beaten none of them. But then they don't need to, because finishing fourth or higher each year, with the Champions league qualification and money it brings, is viewed in success. Indeed, it's even been suggested by manager Arsene Wenger that fourth place should come with a trophy, given its importance.
When there was a new stadium to pay for, and no financial fair play rules to reign in the extravagant spending of Man City and Chelsea — which Arsenal could never compete with — this was a fine strategy. Arsenal seemed to be biding time, maintaining Champions League qualification while paying for a stadium, waiting for the change in rules to level the playing field for them to compete.
With the rules in, the ground paid for, this is meant to be Arsenal's time to pounce isn't it? Certainly the signings of Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil - two of the most expensive, most eye-catching, arguably best signings of the last two summer transfer windows — suggest so. But, still, same old problems. Same old inability to beat the league's better side, same old soft-centre, same old settling for fourth.
To an outsider looking in, this seems to be dividing the club like never before. Shareholder Alisher Usmanov has been publicly critical. Each victory is met with chants in favour of Wenger, each defeat brings an angry backlash against him — that Stoke defeat was followed by a much publicised incident at the train station where Arsenal fans told their most decorated boss, and longest serving manager in the country at the moment, to "fuck off out of our club”. The internet has made a star of Claude, a Skeletor-like Arsenal regular who likes to yell about how rubbish it all is into a camcorder after each game. Former players, Paul Merson chief amongst them, have been cutting in their criticism. The former Man Utd brethren who have infested our screens of late have moved on from analysis to simply laughing at them and writing them off as weak.
While fourth place continues to be achieved, the Champions League money continues to roll in, and the league's most expensive season tickets continue to shift, where's the incentive for change? Particularly when the board, supporters and former players at the heart of Arsenal cannot decide amongst themselves whether change is actually needed at all.
In the meantime, here come QPR... the flattest track of all.
It was the standard Arsenal 4-2-3-1 set up with Mathieu Flamini and Aaron Ramsey deep in the midfield behind Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Santi Cazorla and Alexis Sanchez in support of Danny Welbeck. Wenger moved Welbeck to the left flank and played Sanchez down the middle after half time to try and inject a bit of thrust.
That eventually paid off with a scarcely deserved late winner, but only after Olivier Giroud had come on from the bench to add a physical presence to the attack. The decision to remove Oxlade-Chamberlain for the Frenchman was booed by a section of the home fans, but once he was on suddenly Arsenal were all over Southampton and forced the only goal of the game late in the day.
Against Newcastle they started with Giroud in the middle of a forward three, with Sanchez and Oxlade-Chamberlain either side. As said earlier, they looked fantastic, and won easily. Even with full back Mathieu Debuchy, playing his first league game since September, pressed into service as a centre half thanks to the much-discussed failure to sign an adequate number of defenders during the summer.
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