TERRACE TALK: Arsenal - Will Arsene hang around for next instalment?
Despite the brass monkey weather, it was an enjoyable 90 minutes and unlike Saturday’s high-profile clash, it won’t have taken at least another year off my life, due to the unhealthy toll of so much excruciating stress.
There’s always something far more genuine about a family crowd turning out on a freezing cold night, to watch some affordable (free even!) footie. Unlike the Premier League’s increasing proliferation of tourist glory-hunters, they certainly hadn’t paid £250 to a tout for the principle purpose of posting photos on social media, so that they can smugly be “seen to be there” by all their Facebook friends.
Those who turned up were rewarded with the privilege of watching the bandy-legged Jeff Reine-Adelaide strut his stuff, with that same animalistic grace of Thierry Henry.
We may have progressed to the Youth Cup semis, but as with Saturday’s midday main course, it was “just like watching the Arsenal” in the way the young Guns constantly attempted to walk the ball into the back of the net.
Whereas Spurs seemed so fired up by their opportunity to lord it over us, for the first time in the majority of their fans’ lifetimes that they snatched at every single opportunity to try and take advantage of Cech’s absence. If Aaron Ramsey had been equally eager to get a shot off, remarkably we might even have won this dramatic derby game right at the death.
With each passing season of Spurs being forced to play second fiddle, their rancour rises and their fuse shortens, to the point where plenty of Gooners choose to refrain from making the short trip to the wrong end of the Seven Sisters Road in recent times and wouldn’t dream of inflicting this ugly vitriol upon their kids.
I’m unsure I’d be quite so eager to attend, if it wasn’t for the infirmity that enables me to avoid all the venomous aggro outside the ground, by availing myself of the disabled entrance. Yet for all able-bodied Gooners, the hostile mix of the Lilywhite Neanderthals’ testosterone levels and outdated, overly zealous TSG police tactics ensures that White Hart Lane is the one remaining fixture on the calendar where an eruption of violence is always on the cards.
Spurs steamed into us and bullied us off the ball from the get go, while Mertesacker and co. stumbled around as if they’d just been dragged from their beds after a night out on the tiles. Wenger’s “feng shui” approach doesn’t allow for the red-hot poker up the backside that was needed to remind the Gunners not to dawdle on the ball, as if this was merely another run-of-the-mill match.
I’d hoped Ramsey might feel liberated, freed from his central role, but there were many around me who wanted to string Aaron up, as we looked in serious danger of being battered, until we somehow conjured up the opening goal.
If only we could’ve packed up and gone home at half-time, but sadly we had to wait for the now almost inevitable ritual of the Gunners shooting ourselves in the foot, during the seven-minute spell where we went from being comfortable at 0-1 up, to 2-1 down and very nearly out.
At least we left with our pride still intact and hopefully Alexis’ long awaited contribution might get him back in the groove.
But ultimately this honours-even result favoured our hosts. While Wenger might have broken his famed dressing room silence, supposedly to try and remind Coquelin that he needed to be cautious, by contrast Pochettino reacted in advance to the red card writing on the wall, by removing Lamela from the fray after his contretemps with Alexis, but crucially before earning himself an early bath.
Without some sort of miraculous return to form that might ensure we don’t finish this season empty-handed, I wonder if Wenger will hang around, to become no less bitter than my Spurs pals, or if he’ll have the sense to walk before he’s used up all his remaining credit of Gooner good grace?
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