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By Dave Mahmoudieh It’s been three days now since the capitulation to underscore all capitulations. If this were Sesame Street, the word ‘recovered’ would be a tad premature for most Arsenal fans. But perhaps the word ‘perspective’ might be starting to nestle somewhere amongst the collective psyche of the Gooner fraternity.
Let’s be honest. The result for Spu*s was – by their standards – a historic win achieved in historic circumstances. Which just goes to show how truly shite their history really is. Doubtless there’ll be DVD’s sold on street corners by every Tom, Yid and Harry, many of which will be unwrapped with gap-toothed glee just over a month from now – but hey, so what? Let’s not dwell on what we can’t change. Let’s look at what we can. Starting with our reaction.
Since Saturday I’ve heard some utter nonsense from a few fellow supporters. Yes, we’re hurting. No, we shouldn’t have blown the opportunity to go top. And maybe we are just wasting our time with Wenger. But I would like to remind Arsenal fans everything of one thing:
It ain’t over.
And in a bid to separate the facts from our own fear-fuelled fiction, here is a compilation of the most common excuses I’ve heard as to why we should all just turn out the lights:
‘We’ve lost 4 league games already this season’
So have Chelsea (the Champions). And we’ve already been to their place – they still await a trip to ours. Sure, our home form is in need of drastic improvement before they arrive. But we only lose at home to shit teams, remember? Spu*s kept that tradition going just fine.
‘The team won’t recover mentally from such a humiliating result’
Cast your mind back to the 2007/08 season. Despite challenging on a number of fronts – and beating Spu*s home and away (coming back from a goal down to smash them in their own back yard, I might add) – we finished the season empty-handed. Meanwhile, up the road in Manc Land, a small enterprise known as Manchester United lost home and away to their arch rivals Man City, going down 1-0 at Eastlands and succumbing 2-1 at Old Trafford. The latter game, played on a Sunday in February 2008, coincided with nothing less than the 50th anniversary of the Munich air crash. Utd even wore a special strip to commemorate the occasion. If ever you want to win a game, it’s on a day like that. And if ever you don’t want to lose a game, it’s to your neighbors. Yet lose they did. I actually remember that game rather vividly as the evening after, Senderdross and Adebyebye put us 5 points clear at the summit with a 2-0 victory over Blackburn. Now… before you load your gun, what I am not saying is that a big club losing home and away to their arch rivals is a fated guarantee of winning the league. But what I am saying is that it can be done. What’s more, we still need to go to the Shithole this season, and you can bet we’ll be doing so like men with knives between our teeth after Saturday’s skirmish.
‘This team has no winners’
Really? Cesc is a World Cup and European Championship winner. Robin is a World Cup Finalist, FA Cup winner. Squillaci has won the French league title, the Coupe de la France (the French FA Cup) twice and the Copa del Ray (Spanish FA Cup). Chamakh has won the French league title and French FA Cup. Vermaelen has won the Dutch league title and Dutch FA Cup twice. Arshavin has won the Russian league title and the UEFA Cup. For a relatively young squad, that’s not a bad selection of medals to show off at the training ground.
‘This team never learn’
Granted, the negatives of Saturday’s results have been seen before. But the one modicum of positivity we can take is that if Wenger and his players don’t learn their lesson from this, they won’t learn it from anything. Throwing away two goal leads away at West Ham and away at Wigan last season are one thing. Doing it at home in the manner we did is beyond unacceptable. Even the 4-4 tutorial of a few seasons back was lost in translation. Clearly we needed to go one further in order to understand the message. But I for one – and hopefully for all – will live in the hope and expectation that this one will wake us up. Otherwise, what’s the point? I think we owe it to ourselves to be optimistic after what we’ve seen this team come through. After all, confidence breeds confidence.
‘We can’t hold a lead’
Last week at Everton, we held a lead. A few days before that at Wolves, we held a lead. Away at Man City – after missing a penalty – we held a lead. Away at Blackburn, we held a lead. At Sunderland, we didn’t hold a lead. But neither did Utd at Fulham, at Everton or at home to West Brom. And all of those were 2-goal leads. Shit happens. Sometimes mega shit. Sometimes incredi-shit. And sometimes – round about once every seventeen years – we even lose at home to Spu*s.
Now it’s time to pick ourselves up and rise again. Like we always have. Had we won on Saturday we’d be top by one point right now. Not only that, but following impressive wins away at Everton and Wolves before it, we’d all be sat here confident of staying there. One result shouldn’t change that, no matter how humiliating it was.
I think it’s time some of the fans (and I do only refer to a small minority here) stopped moaning that the players should roll their sleeves up and show some mental strength, only for those same fans to do the exact opposite. Where is our mental strength? Every time we lose some of us act like chickens who’ve just had their heads cut off, running around aimlessly and bleeding all over everything we come into contact with.
The Premier League summit is still in reach. It’s not the route we wanted, but it’s the route we’re going to have to take.
We’ve lost. Now let’s get over it and get back to winning…
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Barnet v Arsenal…live updates from Underhill
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