The Perfect Pitch

So another week, another two victories. What can you say about our 7-0 win over Slavia? Seventh Heaven? The Magnificent Seven? Arsenal in Theoven Nil Rout? Heh, and all this from same media that said we won’t finish above 5th just two months ago.

I think sports journalists just really don’t know what to make of this Arsenal team. At the beginning of the season, it was easy to brand us as the one “Big 4″ side that will drop out of the top 4, and make way for their other creation, Top Four Tottenham (haha, I bet Sp*rs fans would even settle for being Bottom Four Tottenham right about now). It’s a story that they could run with to sell papers, so that’s what they did.

Now, Arsenal are winning game after game, and journos have split into two camps about us. Those that say that we are the new Invincibles despite us not having gone anywhere near winning anything yet, let alone do it unbeaten. And then there are those that seeks to belittle our little run by saying we’ve only played easy teams (and then go on to say “but they can only play the teams put in front of them” so to cover their arses in case we do beat the “hard” teams). Both camps are right and wrong though.

As I posted two weeks ago, yes, we’ve had the easier fixtures compared to the other sides. Most of our games are at home, and we’ve played bottom of the table teams more often than not. But at the same time, we’ve also played back to back UEFA Cup champions Sevilla, albeit at home. And we’ve also played 3rd placed Man City, 5th placed Portsmouth and 6th placed Blackburn, but again only Blackburn away from home and we didn’t win that one (thanks a lot, Jens). Tottenham, West Ham and Steaua Bucharest away, while looking like easy games against poorly performing teams, have traditionally been hard games for us. Even Bolton is usually not a straight forward victory for us, although we never seem to lose to them at home. It’s like us versus Reading last season - we beat them twice, but the other “big” teams failed to do so. So does that make them an easy team or a hard team? They were certainly easy enough for us. This is why you can’t just say, this team is top or bottom of the table and therefore it should be a hard or easy game. The easy games are the ones you win easily, the hard games are the one that you don’t - no matter which team you are up against. All you can say is that we’ve had a more generous fixture, but the teams we have beaten so far are the same types of teams we dropped the most points to last season.

As for football from another planet, it only matters if we end up winning something at the end of it, because beautiful football and no trophies is still a failed (and ultimately, frustrating) season. To be honest, apart from the 7-0 and a few selected games, we haven’t played as good as I know we are capable of. Even last season, some of the football we played were the best I’ve seen, but the result didn’t always reflect the performance. In fact, I think we played just as well against CSKA Moscow last season at home as our 7-0 from Tuesday, and we didn’t even score a single goal in that game. We’ve always been creative, but end product has been inconsistent. This season, we’ve been very clinical without being overly creative at times which just goes to prove that the result, not the performance, is everything. So no, this is not the best Arsenal side ever, but it’s definitely more efficient than last season’s team.

Anyway as the media would say, our next two games will determine our season. Our first real tests. Games that will decide our chances for the title. Pundits have already said they will only back us to win the title if we can beat both Liverpool and Man Utd. Really? You mean if we beat all the easy teams like you say we have so far, and then beat the two hardest teams and our main title rivals, then we might have a good chance to win the league? Wow fellas, don’t stick your neck out too far. I’m going to expand on that and say that if we win all our home games and then win all of our aways games, we just *might* win the league!