Villa victory one more step on hard road

GEOGRAPHICALLY speaking, Saturday’s trip to Birmingham was the least daunting of the three we face, in a week which is set to test the indefatigability of even the most devout amongst the Gooner faithful.

After our weekend jaunt to the Midlands, on the face of it, you’d have to be stark raving bonkers to follow this with a 500-600 mile round trip trek to Tyneside on today, only to repeat the journey at the crack of dawn for Sunday’s lunchtime KO on Teeside. Especially when all three matches are live on the box!

But football is a compulsive addiction much like any other, whereby eventually free will goes out of the window and frequent indulgence becomes almost obligatory. We grow more euphoric with each subsequent game, as the Gunners scale increasingly-higher peaks of passing perfection. With each three-point haul prolonging our sojourn at the Premiership summit, we dare to believe.

Perhaps if our football wasn’t quite so pleasing on the eye and I wasn’t so worried about missing out on another special performance, I might be prepared to sacrifice one of the three away games to the comparatively trivial aim of appeasing the folk at work. However as our campaign evolves, it’s beginning to acquire the scent of the sort of red-letter season that demands an 100% attendance record. Doubtless, come May more than one Gooner will end up with their Arsenal obsession cited as the cause of their divorce, or place in the dole queue.

On route to Villa Park my pal reminded me that we have a mutual friend who’s divorce papers are proudly displayed as a badge of honour, in a frame on the office wall in his home, because they cite the detrimental impact the Arsenal had on his and his former wife’s social life.

Footballistically speaking (to quote a Wengerism), based on recent form, Villa should’ve been the most formidable of this week’s opposition on Saturday, with their obvious improvement under O’Neill and with Ashley Young and Agbonlahor seemingly on fire. Yet the home side hardly had a chance to demonstrate their progress during the first-half. Gardener’s opening goal aside, they spent most of the 45 minutes doing a decent impersonation of our dog chasing her own tail.

Our dominance was so imperious that some managers might have been moved to knock on our dressing room door at half-time, to respectfully enquire if they might have their ball back at some stage after the break. Not being one to stand on such ceremony, the Derry man inspired his team to wrestle it back.

Villa were always bound to come back into the game at some stage and although we’d proved we could cope without Fabregas in the first-half, once Hleb limped off to join the ranks of our walking wounded, his absence proved to be the loss of one midfield maestro too many, enabling Villa to take command, while we struggled to keep possession.

It was a Jekyl & Hyde type game of two halves, where inevitably we began to rue our all too customary inability to kill off our prey, whilst we had them in our sights.

If, as I suspect, Villa subsequently end up taking points from our rivals, Saturday’s result could prove significant. However it was absolutely crucial that we avoided defeat on the day. With the majority of the media having predicted a dodgy season for the Arsenal, they’ve been forced to wait for us to falter and on the back of our display in Seville, a second successive failure would’ve resulted in a blinding flash, as the hacks whipped out their “told you so” knives.

Instead of which, we head to Toon Town with our tails up. It will be a “no-contest” if we end up facing the same Newcastle side that laid down like lambs against Liverpool. But Allardyce had an annoying habit of raising Bolton’s game against the Gunners and we could’ve well done without the added inspiration of his new job being on the line. &

It is an utterly preposterous reflection on the ridiculously-impatient nature of this results-orientated business that a defeat against such an in-form Arsenal team could merit the “tin-tack” after such a brief tenure. However with no love lost between us and Newcastle’s lugubrious gaffer, if it should transpire, nothing would give me more pleasure than to see us gift wrap his zebra coloured gold watch!