Happy new month to you guys!
It’s a slightly cold Monday morning over here and I must say that’s fine by me. I love me a little cold as opposed to the heat we’re usually exposed to, but I must say it is rather weird to find ourselves in a harmattan period at the beginning of February, maybe it’s the whole climate change thingy.
So we are through to the fifth round of the FA cup and our dreams of retaining the trophy a record third time is alive and well. We played a Burnley team that were in good form and the thing is even though we weren’t exactly sparkling, we did well and credit must go to the lads and the manager.
There were a lot of positives; a debut for new boy Elneny who I think looked really, really good. Not spectacular, but solid and I like solid. Sanchez is back and that was so amazing to see and he worked the first goal and scored the second and what a finish that was by Chambers!
Oof!
Coquelin also came back and though he was a bit rusty, he put in a lot of good tackles and he was mostly tidy in possession. All this was good stuff, but there was some bad; reports indicate that Wilshere has had a setback in recovery and the same for Tomas Rosicky. This made me so sad. Like unbelievably sad. I love Tomas and Jack and jack’s is almost heartbreaking, he’s almost become like a Diaby and while we hoped that story would have a happy ending, it didn’t and with that at the back of our minds, you can imagine how pessimistic we will be over Wilshere’s long term fitness now.
Rosicky’s was even worse for me because he’s arguably my favourite Arsenal player, so to realize that with things the way they are there’s a distinct possibility that that could well have been his last game for the club and that saddens me greatly. In my opinion I’d love nothing more than for us to win the league, but even that will be bittersweet as he may not make the 10 game quota and may therefore not receive a medal which will be a tragedy of epic proportions.
As for our title challenge, I think it’s well and truly on!
When you look at the team that Arsene has at his disposal now you can’t help but be optimistic. You could see how much we missed Sanchez, both our goals apart from having really great finishes were also at the end of great team moves and that was really encouraging for me and Coquelin was cleaning up and Elneny was tireless and more defensive minded. Yes it’s just one game, but he looks a good prospect.
We face Southampton next tomorrow night and playing them relatively so soon after that outrageous defeat will be interesting. It’ll be interesting to see how the team responds. We really need to go on a bit if a winning streak now if we really want the title to be ours. I can’t even fathom the team the boss is going to put out tomorrow as he has so many options in a sense and a lot of combinations can be used.
So let’s hope for the best on that one.
Back on the FA cup. We play Hull in the next round and I’m beginning to see them as a good luck team. Our last two triumphs have come facing them at some point (End, Beginning, Middle?) so I’m pretty optimistic about it.
And being Nigerian, I’m really excited by the prospect of Iwobi…he was good. Like really good. He played well, kept it reasonably simple, was alert, wasn’t shrugged off the ball too easily and when you consider that two new Nigerian wonderkids have been brought in (amidst much pomp and pageantry) and the exploits of the likes of Iheanacho for City and Ighalo for Watford, I’m kinda excited for Nigerian football as a whole.
Let’s hope for the best and a win against Southampton tomorrow. I will write a again soon.
Till later
