International week always feels a bit odd when the season has just got going. You’ve just about got used to two games a week, Premier League, Champions League, Carling Cup plus whatever else you can find to watch and then it all stops for the internationals.
Luckily for England it wasn’t a crucial match over in the Ukraine and Rio Ferdinand has to count himself lucky that yet another mistake was only seen by a few that bothered to pay £10 to watch the game on the internet.
With most players away with their respective home nations, stories and news around Arsenal has inevitably been a bit quiet over the last week or so and with a “run of the mill” game against Birmingham City on Saturday the press have been filling their column inches with transfer speculation and gossip.
One article that caught my eye was on that appeared on the Sky Sports website and in the Star on Sunday yesterday concerning Arsene Wenger. The general jist of it is that Ivan Gazidis has said that he expects Arsene to deliver a trophy of some sort this season.
Whilst it doesn’t say that Arsene will be sacked if he fails to deliver, it really does sound like it. Gazidis is really starting to sound from those quotes like some of the mong headed fans we have to put up with these days. The kind that only started supporting us post 1998-Double and four years without a trophy is a complete disaster.
How many more times does it have to be pointed out where the club was pre-Wenger? We could easily be another Everton or Aston Villa where a cup-run and a Europa League place is considered to be probably the best it will get unless one of the big four has a disaster of a season.
Just because silverware isn’t being polished in our trophy room at the moment, doesn’t mean to say it won’t happen over the next season or two. Maybe an F.A Cup or a Carling cup would keep some of the moaners happy, but Arsene isn’t going to throw all his eggs into that basket just to keep the board happy.
If the club want real progress they must be able to let him do what he wants, I for one would forgo a Carling Cup or F.A Cup success to have a real go at the Champions League again, let teams like Spurs try and win two-bob trophy’s like the Carling Cup because that’s all they will ever be worth!
What some modern day fans and owners don’t seem to realise is that you can’t win everything and even big clubs who consistently finish high in the league may go a few years without winning anything.
A look around at some of the other “big clubs” will show its not just Arsenal who haven’t won much recently. Liverpool haven’t won anything since the F.A Cup in 2006, Man City haven’t won anything since 1976, Everton since 1995, and Spurs haven’t got their hands on anything apart from the League Cup since 1991, whilst Aston Villa have only two League Cup victories in the mid-90’s to look at since they won the European Cup in 1982.
Only Chelsea who have been bankrolled and Manchester United have superior records to us over the last ten years. I for one am confident that our best chance of silverware lies in the Champions League this year, our game suits the continental style the best we can progress to the semi finals again, and hopefully make it all the way to Madrid. Just how sweet would it be to see Barcelona born and bred Cesc lift the trophy in Real’s back yard!