A day of frustration as a big opportunity blown
Nevertheless, with Man U’s outing at St Andrews being the only other Premier League match to survive the arctic conditions, I couldn’t escape the sense that we’d been presented with a prime opportunity to steal a march on the competition and we’d blown it, big time.
I’d have absolutely no axe to grind with this two-point setback, if I felt that the Gunners had gone out there and produced a ‘carpe diem’ type display, that abounded with the sort of vigour of a bunch of players, who are acutely aware of the hunger, passion and commitment necessary, in grinding out the performances to prove their genuine title challenging credentials.
Perhaps it’s slightly naive of me to be expecting these sort of big-hearted displays I recall from my heroes of yesteryear, in these far more mercenary times.
Still, so long as our mollycoddled modern superstars are more ‘up for it’ than the opposition, we can continue to kid ourselves that it means as much to them, as it does to you and me!
Sadly this wasn’t the case last weekend. Arsene might think he can make it so, merely by intoning his “spirit and belief” mantra enough times, but some of Saturday’s pictures told a different story. Watching the highlights again on the box, when Pienaar left Almunia gormlessly wafting a glove at thin air, as the South African winger lifted the ball over our goalie, for what looked to be the winner, from the camera angle behind the goal, Samir Nasri appeared to be the only player in red & white breaking his neck to get back (probably because Pienaar was his responsibility and Samir was guilty of letting him get goalside of him in the first place!), while all his team-mates had given up the ghost.
Don’t get me started on Denilson collapsing to the ground a few moments later, as if he’d taken a bullet from a corporate sniper. Mercifully Vaughan lacked the same composure as Pienaar and slammed the ball into Manuel’s midriff. At the time I was cursing the precious seconds ticking away as Denilson was being treated and stretchered off, but this was nothing compared to the sort of abuse he’d have suffered if he’d had gifted Everton a third goal. Perhaps he’s not the brightest spark in the Arsenal squad, but it should take something as debilitating as a bullet, to prevent even the most brain dead footballer from remembering to put the ball into touch, or passing it to a team-mate, before dropping to the deck.
For some reason, the Gunners weren’t at the races on Saturday. Surely they must’ve known that Moyes was going to use the six-goal, opening day humiliation as motivation, to inspire the Toffees to try and gain some retribution? Right from the off the visitors were first to every 50/50 and winning every second ball.
There seems to be a disconcerting pattern developing, whereby we appear to start matches at a low tempo, as if we’re playing a waiting game, patiently expecting to eventually take advantage when the opposition run out of steam. All too often it takes for us to go a goal behind, before we attempt to stir ourselves from our torpor.
It always seems to come back to the fact that we’re found wanting for big game personalities, the sort of leader out on the park who’s capable of recognising that Saturday’s game was going to be no stroll in the park and turning up the heat on his colleagues, so as to raise our intensity level to match the opposition’s.
Gallas will often get a fly in his ear after the damage has been done and charge forward to try and show his team-mates how to do it.
I appreciate this lead by example expression of Gallas’ desire that the Gunners shouldn’t be undone.
Yet it seems to me that without the sort of demonstrative personality who parks themselves centre-stage and shows that you can’t come into my house and take charge of the remote control, sadly we’re often going to struggle to impose our ability in such fervent encounters.
