4th Place is the best Arsenal FC can hope for a while

Sometimes when a million things go through your mind, your head starts to hurt. Yesterday was one of those days. When we lost to Utd on Tuesday, I was not angered. If anything, I accepted that ultimately we simply weren’t good enough. However losing to Chelsea hurt more. Lightening struck twice at the Emirates as two visiting teams scored more than 3 goals.

Those following me on twitter would have known of my disgust at seeing the starting line up. That my friends, was practically the same line up that were bullied against Chelsea in the FA Semi-final. I was amazed that Diaby was given a start, and that too on the left wing. Much of the talk was that Chelsea were a strong physical side, so why did Van Persie start ahead of Adebayor and Bendtner?

And yet such is the story of this strange season, that Chelsea should have been 3 or 4 goals down before they even scored. It seemed inevitable however, that our lack of potency in front of goal would come to haunt us. I won’t comment too much on the ‘foul’ that resulted in a free kick for the first goal. That should suffice shouldn’t it, needless to say our defence went AWOL once Chelsea got the first goal.

Some days, a team goes out with a mindset such as whatever happens, we will not concede. Instead I saw Toure bombing forward within the first 20 minutes of the game which frankly speaking, simply shouldn’t be happening. It wasn’t as if the game was lost already and that time was against us. By the time the third goal went in, it was as if the desire disappeared and Chelsea like Utd in the previous game stopped counter attacking out of pity.

It speaks volumes at the moment that the best player for me yesterday was a player who was fined for his off the pitch antics. Bendtner came in and ran with real purpose. His goal was reward only for his persistence, otherwise Arsenal wouldn’t have got even that. A lot of people have been praising Song lately. All I saw yesterday was a man who was constantly out of position and slow in tracking back. At least Denilson showed some fight by standing up to the Chelsea players. Him sending Drogba to the ground was a direct retort to Wenger who felt Arsenal were not as physical as their opponents, although on reflection even I with my slim built, can “bring down” Drogba.

Theo Walcott speaks a good game all the time, and should have delivered yesterday. His finishing left much to be desired. How I wished he had the composure of even a Kanu who we know, never scored that many.

The only positive to take is that 4th place is secured, and it simply can’t get worse in terms of league standings. Although we can beat the best, we simply aren’t good enough to challenge them on a regular basis. Nobody likes to lose but the manner of these two defeats are too upsetting.

Lee Dixon said that we are still better than Everton and Villa, on present performances I highly doubt it. It looks like 4th place is the best we can achieve and even then it won’t be easy.

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