Quick Post this morning on our Champions League trip to Belgium, this isn’t one of those days were we moan about all the stuff that has or is going wrong with the club but rather we focus on supporting our team to get the all-important three points and we can worry about our problems another day.
For all the work we do at the end of the season to qualify for the Champions League we never really do well enough to actually stay in the competition. Finishing second ensures we get to play a really tough team at the second round which almost certainly results in a footballing knockout punch.
Two games in this competition this season have been as opposite as the north and south pole. Awful performance away to Dortmund and a splendid home performance against Galatasary and their fire throwing fans, I have a feeling Anderlecht away might be the three away points that would separate who qualifies and who finishes top of the group. Win all your home games and that is 9 points, beat Anderlecht away and you are certain of 12pts. The trip to Turkey is no gimme, not that Anderlecht would be but if I was offered one of the two I’m pretty certain I would rather go to Belgium.
The team is seriously struggling for form now, everything this season seems to be the opposite of previous seasons aside from the constant injuries we suffer. We were good away from home last season, this season we have just won one game away from home against Aston Villa. Last season we kept 17 clean sheets in the league, this season we have managed just one, last season the problem was capitulating to big sides in the first 20 minutes of the game, this season we have played our best football in the first 20 minutes of games, Man City, Galatasary and Hull at home and maybe Chelsea way.
The manager accused his team of lacking focus when they returned against Hull in the second half and he needs to find a way to ensure they replicate the intensity with which they start games throughout the 90mins. The pace of the game these days is so fast if you switch off for a minute you might find yourself behind like we did against Hull.
We need to build momentum and while Hull at home would have been a great launching pad to do this we faltered, so we go again today against Anderlecht. Going into the game against Chelsea away you could feel that the players had a lot more belief in themselves and it showed at least for some periods in that game, and this was not unrelated to the splendid performance against Galatasary. The entire buzz around the club was positive, Welbeck scored three goals, it was lovely night and all the headlines were positive.
We need a spell were all football related news emanating from the club are positive and we had that last season when we went on that amazing run of leading the league till December, we can recreate that again especially in the league as we really do have an easy set of games. Tonight will be a good day to start building that momentum.
I really do not know much about our rivals today and just as Wenger doesn’t pay as much attention to his opposition I wouldn’t bother either. I wonder however if the Anderlecht manager has read the “How to beat Arsenal Manual” shared by Pep Guardiola in his about to be released book. He allowed the Telegraph to publish an extract from his book and while everything he wrote is spot on and shows exactly how clubs should be training with their opposition in mind, I would love to ask why of all parts of his book he chose the Arsenal bit to release early to the press.
Click to Read : The How to Beat Arsenal Manual by Pep Guardiola
It’s almost like a musician who wants to release an album and would drop a single that would drive media attention to his or her album. Pep certainly is a brilliant man and everyone would love to read his opinion on anything footballing as he is one of the most successful coaches on the planet but are we really the easy pickings here? The most click friendly club? Papers like the Daily Mail must make half of their income writing shitty stories about Arsenal as it guarantees clicks.
Pep must have more interesting things to talk about to promote his book I am sure, the man coached Lionel Messi, there has to be something there he can use to publicize his book. He was friends with Tito Vilanova and I’m sure the book has something about that relationship there, hell he played a lot of games against Jose Mourinho and there are always stories to tell about a man that pokes rival coaches in the neck and stamps on opposition players. The man even recently accused Roy Keane of using “the handshake saga” to try to sell his own book so he most likely feels he is a character that can drive sales. Why us Pep? Why us?
Anyways, we can only control our own destiny and now that Pep has released his manual, I hope the Manager pays more attention to how other teams prepare to play his team. We haven’t enjoyed many games this season and I hope this is one that we do. An away night in the Champions League is always a nice place to grab some nice three points.
Have a great day Gooners! Interact with us on the comments section below or on Twitter on @canoncrested. Cheers
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