With another pre-season showing of the illustrious Emirates Cup been and gone, I was left incredibly worried about Arsenal already and a single competitive ball has not been kicked yet.
I may be blowing this entirely out of proportion, but I’m like a wife who doesn’t entirely trust their other half whilst he’s out on a pub crawl. I want to give them the freedom to do their own thing because there’s a bond between us, but in the back of my mind, I know they will mess it up sooner or later. Arsenal do make me incredibly hot and cold at times, a comeback from two nil down against one of the strongest Napoli teams in recent years. Koscielny marking Higuain out of the game when he came on (Papita was not match fit at all, but it still felt good) and Giroud scored an overhead kick! I was buzzing and then yesterday, we go a goal up from Theo Walcott scoring a cross/shot that evaded everyone and dribbled into the far post and then things started to change when I saw Didier Drogba warming up before halftime. Then, hey-ho, as soon as night follows day, the Drog tucks away a penalty and then with less than ten minutes till the end, he turns Mertesacker in the box and despatches a left-foot finish. Sad times.
The worst thing was that the day before we fought from two goals down and Koscielny did my favourite thing in football – he chased down a header before blasting it into the back of the net and we looked like we really wanted it. But a day later and we seemed so blunt about the thing. I know it’s not exactly the most prolific tournament, but I’d like to have shown some consistency in our philosophy for the tournament. Obviously no player goes out to lose, but not every player goes out to fight back from a two goal deficit like we did Saturday.
Cue the media storm of ‘we don’t have enough bodies to cope with the season’ and ‘not enough cover defensively’ and blah, blah. We’ve heard it all before, and although it may be true, the more Arsenal fans complain, it seems the less is done.
So I’m going to mellow out with it all… I say this, but I’ll be a wreck the moment the first whistle blows at the Emirates against Aston Villa on the first day.
