An education in Arsenal's season

Journalists, arm-chair pundits and football fans in general tend to use the phrase “we will learn a lot about the club this week”, when their club has a week of tough matches. It was a phrase banded about when we played Liverpool and Man Utd in a week earlier this season. I felt this was inappropriate, as any team in Europe could lose to Liverpool or Man Utd on any given day, and Arsenal had a terrific record against the top three last season, and only finished third.
For me, this week was far more telling, as Arsenal had to play three such different games.

Wigan – people expected us to win, but they had a new manager, and as often is the case, there would have been a sense of galvanisation, Sevilla – Arsene opting to play some of his young guns against on of the best attacking teams in Europe, and away at Aston Villa, a cold evening against a young exciting team, full of verve, pace and confidence. In all of these games Arsenal were hampered by injuries, and if you can learn about a club in a week, for me, this was it.

We beat Wigan, as I expected, with Gallas proving once again why Mr Wenger is such a fantastic user of intuition and instinct. Many of us doubted Arsene’s decision to make Willie captain at the beginning of the season, assuming Gilberto Silva would be the most natural choice – few of us would doubt that decision now, not that we should ever doubt Mr Wenger’s instinct anyway. Rosicky scored the second goal, and it is an important time for the Czech captain right now, as Cesc and Hleb start to suffer from the countless hacks they receive, his influence from midfield will be incredibly important.

Sevilla was disappointing, but not altogether unpredictable. Arsene virtually fielded the Carling Cup side, but Arsenal weren’t playing Sheffield Utd. The disappointing aspect was not the loss, but the poor performances of Denilson, who looks very low on confidence, Senderos, who looked like he has barely played football before, let alone centre-back, and Gilberto Silva, who is showing the form that Mr Wenger and his coaches had witnessed in pre-season training, and will likely see him on the transfer train come January.

Aston Villa – this was an amazing match! When Arsenal went one-nil down, I wasn’t worried. As an Arsenal fan I am fast becoming used to such an occurrence, but also because I had seen in that opening ten minutes Arsenal rip holes in the Aston Villa defence with consummate ease. Alexander Hleb was simply unplayable, Eboue was tenacious and fiery, Diarra was snappy and zippy – Arsenal deserved to be ahead at half time, and both goals were excellent – a thunderous finish from Flamini, and a fantastic header from Adebayor after another flowing move – so we now have Plan A (pass the ball into the net), Plan B (long ball to Adebayor and see who he can bring into play) and now a good old fashioned Plan C (pacy winger crosses for centre-forward who heads home) The second-half said a lot about Martin O’Neill as a manager, and his fantastic young team. I have not seen a team (including Man Utd and Liverpool) put us under such sustained pressure for an entire half all season (in the Premiership). But Arsenal’s rearguard was just as impressive. Toure, Clichy, Sagna and Flamini were incredible, under pressure for 45 minutes, they refused to accept the inevitable – which didn’t come, and proved why this young team can win the premiership. It was joy to watch. Last season, we would have drawn this match. Now we have a team of leaders, a team of winners, who refuse to give up.

You can learn a lot in a week – this week I learnt that Arsenal can win the Premiership, that Flamini and Sagna will be very important players over the winter period, and that Senderos will make big mistakes if he plays in Toure’s absence. Newcastle fans should be very scared of Wednesday’s game, especially the way they have been defending of late.

I have my own big match on Wednesday - our 6-a-side team Sparta Praguematic are pushing for third place in Soccer Scene Sheffield Division 2, and have a very big game on Wednesday, in which nothing less than a win will do. More news soon.

By Martin Webb