You hear the phrase ‘must-win’ brandished as an epithet to every other Premier League game. Â Today, for Arsenal, it feels appropriate. Â Should we fail to beat West Brom, the consequences will be catastrophic. Â Not as far as the Premier League table goes: there’s plenty of time for us to catch the Baggies, as well as the other teams chasing Champions League Qualification. Â The damage to the trust between fans and manager, however, could be hugely significant. Â Last week, the atmosphere shifted from tense to toxic. Â I dread to think where it goes from here.
West Brom come with a strong squad. Â Their only key player missing is Scott Carson BEN FOSTER (thanks for the copious corrections in the comments), and unfortunately for Gooners everywhere, his place won’t be taken by Martin Fulop. Â The man who made the last day of 2011/12 hilarious for all the right reasons now plays for Asteras Tripoli in the Greek Super League, but we’ll never forget him, and shall raise a glass in his honour on every St. Totteringham’s Day.
Arsenal are without both Lukas Podolski and Theo Walcott, as well as the expected absentees Bacary Sagna and Laurent Koscielny. Â Carl Jenkinson will continue at right back, with Mertesacker and Vermaelen in the middle, but it’s ahead of that where things become more interesting. Â We can be fairly certain that Mikel Arteta and Jack Wilshere will anchor the midfield. Â Santi Cazorla has started every Premier League game this season, and on each occasion it has been in the central playmaking role. Â I wonder, however, whether the absence of our first-choice wingers and the renewed availability of Tomas Rosicky will see Arsene bring the Czech in to the centre and shift Santi wide. Â We shall see, but I don’t think a change in role would do the Spaniard any harm – he may even find himself a bit liberated. Â Olivier Giroud is guaranteed to play at centre-forward, and I’d then go for Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain over Gervinho on the flank, for the simple reason that The Ox is a better crosser of the ball, and that suits Giroud down to the ground.
Arsenal will take comfort from the fact that West Brom have lost their last two matches, but know that the Baggies have beaten Chelsea, Liverpool and Everton already this season. Â Swansea showed that sides no longer come to the Emirates playing with fear; they come to score goals and win. Â Arsenal will need to be vastly improved to win this one. Â And marks my words, Arenal need to. Â It’s a must-win.
Arsenal were not able to raise a trophy aloft at the end of this season. We were, however, allowed to lift up Pat Rice, and give him the send-off he truly deserves. A traumatic season ended on a high as Arsenal secured third place with this win at the Hawthorns. You might not get any baubles for qualifying for the Champions League, but one need only look at our post-match celebrations to realise its significance.
This has, in my humble opinion, been the most exciting season in the history of the rebranded Premier League, and it had a final day to match. Events in Manchester will rightly take the headlines, but for any Arsenal fan the only thing that mattered was our game against West Brom. Arsene gambled a little in his team selection, dropping Gibbs and Ramsey for Santos and Coquelin, and playing the inexperienced Jenkinson at right-back. The result would suggest that this brave move paid off.
We certainly owe a lot to West Brom’s stand-in goalkeeper, Marton Fulop. Early on, his dallying over a back-pass allowed Yossi Benayoun to steal in and grant us a lead that should have settled the nerves. Instead, as against Norwich, his goal was a cue for complacency to creep in, and we ended up going behind. First Shane Long was wrongly ruled onside and fired past a hesitant Szczesny, before poor defending allowed Graham Dorrans to reach his own flick-on and fire home from the edge of the box.
Fortunately, we got a goal back before half time. Without that I’m not sure we would have had the bottle to turn it around. Andre Santos, playing in the “false three†position (credit to Barney Ronay), strode forward and thumped a 25-yard shot that took a slight deflection before beating Fulop at his near post. Again, the Hungarian could have done better.
At half-time Spurs led Fulham comfortably. Arsenal knew that only a win would be good enough. I said then I felt that if we could cut out our defensive errors, we’d have enough to win the game, and so it proved. Again we owed a debt to Fulop, who flapped horribly at a corner, allowing Laurent Koscielny to stab home. Interestingly, Fulop spent three seasons on the books of one Tottenham Hotspur, in which time he failed to muster a single competitive appearance. Judging by yesterday’s evidence, he’s still feeling a little sore about that.
This rolercoaster game was by now horribly reminiscent of that fateful 3-3 with Norwich, and I was dreading a heartbreaking late equaliser. That we didn’t see one is due largely to Kieran Gibbs, who produced this stunning tackle in stoppage time.
There were other heroes on the day. Wojciech Szczesny recovered from his positional error on the first West Brom goal to put in a commanding display, especially when you consider that Arsene Wenger revealed he has been playing with a bad shoulder injury. It was fitting that Koscielny, our best player over the season bar Van Persie, should score the vital goal. As for Yossi Benayoun, what can I say? His contribution has been enormous, and his role in final day folklore will make him a firm favourite among Arsenal fans for years to come. It seems unlikely Arsene will give him a permanent deal – Yossi himself has intimated he’d like to move somewhere he’ll play more regularly – but I’d certainly consider trying to convince him to stay. Whenever he’s been called upon, he’s shown more commitment than many players on more lucrative, long-term deals. The guy is a real pro, and whoever gets him next season will be lucky to have him.
At the full-time whistle, the relief was palpable. To have finished third in a season which began with four defeats from seven feels like we have snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Disaster threatened to engulf us on so many occasions this season, and yet we’ve actually managed to improve upon our league placing from last year. And, crucially, we’ve edged above Tottenham. Not so chatty now, Mr. Van der Vaart.
Personally, I’d like to extend my congratulations to Arsene Wenger. If another manager had arrived in September and shepherded us to this position, he’d be hailed as a messiah. Instead, I’ll doff my cap to an ordinary human who is an extraordinary football manager.
There are other challenges ahead, starting with resolving the future of Robin van Persie. After that we have the summer transfer window, next season’s Premier League, and (thankfully) a Champions League campaign to worry about. I hope you’ll excuse me if I forget all that for now, and enjoy the moment. My glass is half-full. In fact, it’s more than that. It’s Fulop.
At around 2.50pm this afternoon, Arsene Wenger will look out at his Arsenal team, and attempt to cajole just one more performance out of them. Fortunately, he’s a man steeped in experience, who will doubtless know just what to say to his men. The situation is clear: win, and third is ours. Fail, and we’re at the mercy of others, and quite possibly locked out of the Champions League. As supporters, we can only imagine what words we might summon up in such circumstances. Imagine it, and then write it down. Like this.
I’d start be spelling out what’s at stake. Champions League football is a massive thing for Arsenal. It maintains our status among Europe’s elite clubs, significantly boosting our reputation and our bank balance. That’s vital. It’s easy to say that you wouldn’t mind dropping out of it, but it’s less easy to accept the possible consequences. Falling out of the top four would make it far harder both to sign new players and keep our current ones.
Even putting aside our practical concerns, every player in the squad should want to be in the Champions League. Being a sportsman is all about pushing yourself as far as you can, and testing yourself against the best. As far as European football is concerned, the Champions League is that arena. The likes of Tomas Rosicky must recognise that they won’t get many more chances on that stage. At the other end of the spectrum, lads like Kieran Gibbs and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain surely know that competing at that level is vital to their development.
For a long time this season it looked impossible. Following our 8-2 mauling at Old Trafford I was roundly mocked for saying I still felt we’d finish in the top four. Chelsea’s success in reaching the Champions League Final has meant that even the top four did not provide the requisite security: it had to be third. And that, for such a long while, looked out of reach. Spurs were flying, until Bacary Sagna launched himself at the ball and powered home a header of such force that in that one moment it flipped the North London hierarchy in our favour.
Everything that followed – our tremendous run, Spurs’ collapse – was to try and claw us in to a position where third place was in our hands. We have attained that. We have ninety minutes in which we are masters of our own destiny. When fate contorts itself to hand you that kind of opportunity, you simply do not pass it up.
The mention of Spurs is important. As much as this is about European football, it’s also about local rivalry. Do this group of players really want to be the first to finish below Tottenham since 1995? Especially when it’s so easily avoided?
All we have to do is win one game. I’d make it clear to the players: we’re not asking them to run through walls. We don’t face a Herculean task. On paper, this is a game that Arsenal should win. We simply need to do our jobs. We need to be focused and switched on for ninety minutes, plus every second of stoppage time. We need to take individual responsibility for marking our men and tracking runners. West Brom have nothing tangible to play for: we have no excuse for not showing more desire in every fifty-fifty. The Baggies aren’t a hugely physical side, either. This isn’t a match in which we need to drastically adapt our game. We simply need to do what we spend every day drilling over-and-over again: touch, pass, move. If we control the possession we will create the most chances. And we have the league’s best striker on the end of them.
If we do the simple things right, we will win. And if we do we will be able to reflect on ending this traumatic season on a relative high. Defeat would bring a summer of uncertainty and cast a shadow over the forthcoming campaign. And, after what we’ve been through this season, the fans don’t deserve that.
The players must recognise that the supporters have stuck with this iteration of the Arsenal team through quite a lot in this long campaign. Early on, the majority of supporters recognised the limitations of the squad and realised that negativity was not helpful. Better Arsenal teams would’ve been met with jeers and boos for some of the performances we’ve seen this season. This term, everyone has stuck together to try and drag us out of a self-inflicted hole.
Now it’s time to reward the fans. To allow them to celebrate something – not a trophy, but something: a place on the European stage, and getting one over on a rival. It’s time to reward Pat Rice for 44 years of outstanding service to Arsenal with a good send off. It’s time to put down a marker for next season, and show that despite the loss of key players, terrible injury problems, humiliating defeats and plenty of bad luck, this club will not be broken. We are Arsenal, and winning this one game is well within our capacity. Keep focused, keep fighting, keep the faith, and get this done. Come on boys.
Does anybody want to finish third? After we made a right royal mess of our game with Norwich, we found ourselves needing favours from elsewhere. Thanks to an abundance of dark prayer and a good degree of fortune, we got them: City beat Newcastle to set themselves on course for the title, and Aston Villa managed to hold ten man Spurs to a 1-1 draw. It is somehow back in our hands.
It’s a reprieve that I’m not sure we deserve. Arsene was clearly furious with the performance on Saturday, and fiercely critical of our play at both ends of the pitch. Of the defending, he said:
“Again we made the mistakes at the back which were absolutely unbelievable. It is a big disappointment because when you come back into the game like we did from 2-1 and then give a goal away in the way that we did.
At the back everybody was absolutely horrendous for the third goal. It is just not acceptable.â€
“When you look at the chances we created, it is absolutely unbelievable that we scored only three goals.
Again we are punished because Robin had to score and many times we do not get enough goals from elsewhere. We had so many obvious chances that you would want somebody else to score one. That doesn’t happen enough.â€
Even Robin could have been a little sharper. Everyone – from Szczesny to the skipper – will have to be markedly better at West Brom on Sunday.
It is now devastatingly, heart-stoppingly simple: win at West Brom, and third is ours. There’s no trophy on hand, but in many other respects it resembles a cup final: ninety minutes that will determine if this season lives in the memory as a blessed relief or a painful disaster.
It’s a fantastic opportunity, and one which we really shouldn’t have. One can only hope the players recognise their good fortune and seize the second chance that’s been afforded to them. However, after taking just three points from the last four games, a degree of doubt among supporters is more than understandable. The bad news is that if results go against us on Sunday (and in tonight’s game between Liverpool and Chelsea), we could end up as low as sixth. Anyhow, there’s time later in the week to discuss what is sure to be a massive day for the club.
If you listen to the chatter on Twitter and forums, many supporters’ minds have already turned to next season. The winds of change haven’t yet blown the transfer window open, yet already the rumours are whipping up a frenzy. The two names cropping up most commonly are those of Yann M’vila and Jan Vertonghen. As far as I’m aware, stories suggesting a deal for either of these players is imminent are somewhat premature. Whilst I don’t doubt Arsene admires both, competition for their signature and the limitations of our 25-man squad and wage structure make their arrivals far from a certainty. Vertonghen, for example, is far closer to signing for Spurs, and I understand that: we have plenty of centre-backs.
There’s also been debate about just who will replace Pat Rice as Arsene’s assistant manager next season. Le Grove say it will be Steve Bould. If that turns out to be the case, I’d welcome the appoint. Bould has done a fantastic job with the U-18s, and I’m sure will carry that work over to the first-team. However, expecting him to drill a back four to match the one he played in is probably unrealistic. Only recently Bould spoke about the impossibility of replicating that sort of unit:
“You could not step up with your arm out and scream offside like we used to. That is not an area you can really coach any more. Also, you cannot get away with going to ground or any real aggressive tackling the way we used to nowadays.
So, while there are some principles that persist, passing on what I used to do as a player has to be adapted.”
Certainly an internal appointment would make most sense, and if Bould is the man chosen I expect we’ll hear something about it in the days following the West Brom game.
Another change for next season will be our home strip, with the club unveiling Nike’s latest offering:
It doesn’t seem to be particularly popular, particularly compared with this year’s classically simple 125th Anniversary effort, but I must admit I don’t mind it. The regularity with which we change our kits around means that there will inevitably be arbitrary changes introduced, like the blue trim, and I’m happy to put up with it for a season or two.
Right. This is going to feel like a long old week.
It’s all so simple. Win two games, and third is ours. Other teams’ results can do nothing about that single, unalterable fact. It should be utterly reassuring. And yet…
I must confess that I am an anxious Arsenal fan. If you’re a regular reader of the blog, that won’t surprise you: the enormity of wrenching third place from this most nightmarish of seasons, and the potential heartbreak of handing it back to Tottenham on the final day have combined to fray what little nerve I ever had. It seems it’s catching, too. Amusingly, after Newcastle and Spurs both picked up impressive wins in midweek, a reader tweeted me declaring the results were my fault, as I’d been giving out “negative vibes†all week. I question his reasoning, and yet apologise profusely.
I appreciate the arguments against anxiety. We’ve only got to play Norwich and West Brom. The Canaries seem to have preempted their summer holidays, losing three on the bounce and conceding an average of almost four goals p/ game across those fixtures. West Brom, meanwhile, are also playing for nothing, and are led by a manager who has admitted to the press he would have preferred to resign in order to focus on his forthcoming responsibilities as England manager. On paper, these are distinctly winnable fixtures.
The problem is that Arsenal have a habit of losing distinctly winnable fixtures. Even in the midst of our best run of the season, we managed to come unstuck against Wigan and QPR. Common perception is that we’ve stalled; our positive momentum halted by an unshifting metaphorical handbrake. We’re all looking nervously towards Robin van Persie, a figure whose form this season has been so stupendous as to take on a mythical quality. He, we all hope, is the Arthurian figure who can release the handbrake from the stone and set us on the roll again.
My panic reached its peak on Wednesday night. Whilst things have been in our own hands for a while now, I can’t help but hope for favours from others. Going in to the game, we knew that a draw between Chelsea and Newcastle, coupled with defeat for Spurs, would leave us needing to win just one of our two remaining games to guarantee third spot. At a certain point, it looked as if we might get our wish: Newcastle held a slender 1-0 lead at Stamford Bridge, as Bolton equalised against Tottenham. However, Papiss Cisse’s wonder goal and Bolton’s defensive collapse soon put an end to that. Spurs and Newcastle have now closed to within a point of us, and suddenly we’re under the cosh.
After a brief period of catastrophising, during which I began to cancel all my post-August appointments for Thursday nights, I consoled myself with the thought that in these end-of-season tussles for league positioning, the dynamic can shift very quickly. Look at the battle at the bottom: the favourites to join Wolves in the Championship seem to change on a week-by-week basis. This Saturday, Arsenal have a tremendous opportunity. Beat Norwich – as we know we must – and suddenly the pressure piles back on to the chasing pack. They would know that defeat on Sunday, when Newcastle face title-chasers Man City and Spurs travel to a relegation-threatened Villa, would leave us out of reach.
There is no reason we shouldn’t do it. When you take a step back, talk of our ‘poor form’ is somewhat overblown. Yes, we haven’t won in three, and the defeat to Wigan was very disappointing, even taking in to account their recent giant-killing exploits. Draws against Chelsea and away to Stoke, however, are creditable results. At the Britannia, there were signs that the fighting spirit so crucial to our second half of the season resurgence is returning.
We have all the ingredients to win both remaining games. Our first-choice back four is fit and in form. We have the league’s best player, and he’s back among the goals. And, as supporters, we have the reassurance provided by having been in this situation before, and come out on top – albeit with a little help from a dodgy lasagna and a certain Yossi Benayoun.
The squad must know now that there is absolutely no margin for error. Spurs have had their dip, and are now right back in form. Newcastle’s dip came and went months ago, and they look like they could overturn anyone at the moment. The pressure is back on us now, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s when we were comfortably clear that we began to look a little complacent. Beat Norwich tomorrow, and the pendulum swings once again.
