Goodplaya on Friday: Wolves, celebrating Cesc, Arsenalisation and Diaby or Rosicky/Nasri
Not yet as good as it seems
But in terms of weighing-up the success of a period between international breaks goes, this one is still in the balance.
Birmingham at home, West Ham away, Spurs at home and Wolves away should be yielding at least nine or ten points really. Thus far we have seven from the three games.
Competition at full back is great. Nobody can accuse Sagna and Clichy of being complacent. But having understudies whose main strengths are in areas where the first choice two could improve will do no harm at
all.
Now both Rosicky and Nasri are seemingly fit, will we see one of them sometimes deployed in the role Diaby has been playing in? Physically we will lose something but it will be interesting to see how it affects how much possession we enjoy. What do you reckon?
West Ham away was two thirds of a defeat and so really only three points in the West Midlands tomorrow will do. Otherwise we’d have got a worse return than had we lost to Spurs and won the other three winnable fixtures.
Looking back at the week, there were some great moments. But I think one will linger for many a year.
Unlike a lot of people in the ground, I didn’t miss that Cesc goal last Saturday. Why? Because I’m such a paranoid freak that I refused to allow myself to watch replays of the first goal on the giant screen, so paranoid was I that my complacency would be copied by the team and that Spurs would score straight from the kick-off.
So I was watching as Cesc did his thing. Reading the papers you would be forgiven for thinking Cesc had been presented with the ball a yard in front of an open goal.
Sure he defending wasn’t great but how about a bit of praise for our man waltzing through the spine of their side from the half way line and then finishing under pressure from 18 yards?
There remain few sights as electrifying as seeing a player slalom through a defence and finish with (slightly unexpected) aplomb. Given the timing and opposition, it truly was one of those moments where everyone lost it.
Arsene and Pat Rice’s reaction is captured in the memorable photo below from the Arsenal web site.
For me it was a “hug thy neighbour” moment. Arseblogger called the roar “primal”, the man from East Lower described it as a “bundle”, an excellent last word that I last heard in the playground.
All in all, it was great, but in a way drawing at Wolves will be a bigger downer than drawing with Spurs would have been.
Leave it out
Now if only a few more supporters would stop using the excuse of yet another home game wrapped up early on as reason to head for the hills. After 90 minutes on Wednesday the ground wasn’t so much noticeable for the empty seats as for the few that were still taken.
Who do you trust?
I’m no expert on these things. But I do seem to remember Usmanov’s right-hand man Farhad Moshiri telling anyone who would listen what a disaster the sale of Emmanuel Adebayor was.
Which to me makes Stan’s silence rather endearing.
Goodplaya responds
Booland says:
Goodplaya says
I know what you mean but I guess in a sense the real surprise would be if being as attacking as we are, we didn’t sometimes look overexposed.
Stevie Morrow says:
Goodplaya says
To be fair, it was quite a while.
Gunnerlad says:
Goodplaya says
As I say above, it’s a tough one this. I’ll be interested to see how it pans out.
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