Hello, how are you and thank you for visiting the blog. I write sparingly so it’s always lovely when you find people who still visit the site when I do have something up. Hopefully this should improve in the coming year. Lots of interesting things have happened since the last time I wrote ranging from Giroud becoming TGSTEL and sending us into the knock out stages of the Champions League where we have been drawn against Barcelona, Leicester have sealed top spot at Christmas, PSG are 20 points ahead in the French league, Chelsea were and are still rocking the bottom of the EPL and have sacked their manager.
On the matter of Jose Mourinho, honestly do not feel any sense of sympathy towards what befell him. Let’s be honest, birds of a feather they say flock together. The man perfectly encapsulates the Chelsea way of doing things, loud mouthed, antagonistic, egocentric and myopic. With his team swimming in relegation waters, the problems lay everywhere else but with him. When players performed he willingly took credit, when they didn’t, they betrayed him.
He however still had the backing of the fans as witnessed at the game against Sunderland and even Manchester United fans who seem to have had enough philosophy lessons to last two lifetimes are willing to accept him as their next manager. Good luck to them. Most likely he will guarantee them the trophies they now desperately seek. Trophies being the singular reason many think he is the best coach in the world and wouldn’t mind having him at Arsenal. It’s hard to argue against that, trophies themselves are evidence of some level of success and are the metric by which most things in football are measured. People are quick to contrast his cabinet with that of Wenger.
However, if Wenger wanted personal success he too would have frolicked with Europe’s biggest clubs backed by owners willing to spend huge sums acquiring talents. Maybe we would appreciate him more if he left us after the Invincibles season for Real Madrid where his chances of winning league titles would have been at least 50% with Barcelona his only rivals. He would have done same thing at PSG and Bayern Munich where he would have had an even higher percentage of success. Maybe he would have even won the Champions League with one of those clubs. We live in a world where no one is patient to be a part of the process anymore, so managers like Wenger and the work they do are not as appreciated as much as they should. Mourinho and his cheque book will guarantee instant results until he finds a way to annoy himself out of the club.
At Chelsea however, to be fair to him, he really was working with a bunch of snakes or rats as their own fans choose to call them. A football player with a contract is one of the most protected species on the planet. What would I give for a job where I am paid well to just turn up like some of those Chelsea players decided to do this season. In every other sphere of life, you are appraised on a monthly or yearly basis or even case by case basis, any semblance of dereliction of duty and you are shown the door. Footballers on the other hand are protected by their contract. Will clubs ever have the right to fire players on the back of non-performance?
I very much doubt that else if I ran Arsenal there would be a few players I would have sacked. For instance:
- Gervinho – Immediately after that horrendous miss against Bradford in the league cup. That would have been the final straw in his long history of misses. Fired in the tunnel.
- Eboue – April 17th , 2011 when for absolutely no obvious reason in the dying minutes of extra time he decided it was a good time for him to clatter into Lucas Leiva’s back and ended up conceding a penalty which cost us a win and left our title hopes in tatters. Fired in the tunnel.
- Silvestre – Fired on sight as I definitely wouldn’t have sanctioned his signing.
- Andre Santos – Fired in the tunnel immediately after he swapped shirts with Van Persie.
Obviously I would make a terrible owner but more seriously, Chelsea is the only club I know where player mutiny has gotten two managers sacked. It’s one thing not to have the talent to put a fight, you lose games and your manager gets fired, but to decide as a collective unit not to be bothered about winning to get a manager sacked, that is a different level of low, and to think it has happened to two managers at the same club. Despicable.
To more Arsenal related matters, with two wins in December, the buzz around the club is returning after the terrible November we had and I really fancy our chances against City. A win would certainly lay a serious marker about our title hopes judging that Man City are in direct contention with us.
Leicester however are not showing any signs of dropping off the top spot and it might be time to start paying them some serious attention. I tweeted my difficulty with wanting Leicester to lose games as everyone loves a fairy-tale and with Vardy and Mahrez they certainly are providing us with one. However, success for them would still be finishing in top 4 whilst for us anything short of the title this year would seriously be deemed as failure, so once its 12.01am January 1st, 2016; I am shedding myself of any feelings towards them.
However, this is my preferred league table at the end of the season
- Arsenal
- Leicester City
- Manchester City
- Crystal Palace
- Liverpool
- Watford
That is a nice mix of traditional top four finishers and some new breed don’t you think? With Aguero back from injury just in time to score against Arsenal and exit the game at half time, the debate is around whether we should start Sánchez or not and I think he is most likely to start from the bench. At what point he joins the game would depend on how the game is panning out.
I hope we are winning comfortably and he can be introduced around the 75th minute, rather than coming on with us chasing the game which would mean he would have to stretch his recently recovered hamstrings to try to turn the game around. Either ways, we have to trust the Wenger’s judgment.
I hope we win, would be nice to go into Christmas with a bag filled with three lovely points. Have a great day buddy and thank you for visiting the site.
