Isn’t it amazing how we were all sulking and raining abuses on Wenger, the whole team and Wojciech Szczesny
in particular after that loss to Southampton on New year’s day. The whole team seemed a mess back then and were wallowing somewhere in 5th position on the table.
Fast forward a few months and yes!, we’re out of the Champions league but then, 15 wins out of 17 games, 8 wins on the bounce in the league and cementing our place in second on the table
. Some Gunners are already of the opinion that we could push Chelsea for the title if we keep this form up.
One of those few, include our man of the moment, Olivier Giroud or should I say one of our men of the moment since we have many in form players now
. For one reason or another, the juju people in France
have told Olivier that Chelsea would flop and drop crucial points starting from the game against us in two weeks and then the mighty Arsenal would move to the summit of the table and finish the season as EPL champions.
‘You can’t play your best football every game. We tried to be focused on not conceding and it’s one more clean sheet,’ Giroud said proudly.
‘As long as we were winning the game I don’t think we were in too much danger. We are really pleased.
‘If we had been told we would win this game 1-0 I would have signed for it straight away. Burnley played really tough against us. It was a big fight.
‘We know about the record of the Invincibles. It’s really good for us to be near that and I’m really proud to take part. But we don’t want to stop here. We want to carry on and keep this good run going until the end.’
If Arsenal manage that, Jose Mourinho might have a far tighter finish to the title race than he could have anticipated a couple of months ago.
Wenger has even found his own Claude Makelele in 23-year-old Frenchman Francis Coquelin who sat in front of the back-four and kept Burnley’s chances to a minimum on Saturday. Club legend Thierry Henry even gave him a new nickname ‘The Detective’ for the way he sensed danger and snuffed it out. [quote font_size=”20″ bcolor=”#dd1a1a” arrow=”yes” align=”left”]As long as we were winning the game I don’t think we were in too much danger[/quote]
‘I always knew I could do a job for the team. I just needed a chance to show it,’ said Coquelin, who was sent loan to Charlton earlier this season.
It’s ironic that having preached the beautiful game for nearly two decades Wenger has finally found a couple of warriors in Laurent Koscielny and Coquelin that hark back to the Tony Adams era but then I love it that way and I believe we all do. Playing our beautiful football but still having some hard knocks in the team, isn’t that what we have a while now.
We might all be rejoicing about our current position but one man somewhere doesn’t feel satisfied with just finishing second. His name is Ivan Gazidis.
Gazidis says the Premier League is ‘going to become more competitive which is going to be more challenging for clubs like us.’
‘We are not happy but we are going to keep pushing to the end and see how far we can go,’ said Gazidis.
I don’t know about Gazidis but let me reiterate the fact that come end of this season, a 2nd place finish and the FA cup would be just fine by me and a host of other people if I am permitted to speak their minds.
That’s all I have for now.
Am out.*drops pen*
Oops!,who writes with a pen nowadays*drops laptop
