The Harder They Come.
I hate Saturday afternoons when Arsenal aren’t playing as I find myself looking at the results of other teams and wishing that it was Arsenal’s result coming in. This weekend it isn’t being
helped by the fact that it’s the FA Cup instead of the Premier league and the interest in the FA Cup just isn’t what it used to be a few years ago. With our trip to Stoke not until Sunday
afternoon I can spend today catching up on a few things I have to do at home and I would never usually do that on a Saturday afternoon during the football season. I’ll probably fix my broken
electric shower and clear out all the things in my shed that got destroyed when the felt blew off the roof last week during a very heavy rainfall. It’s not ideal but with all our injury
problems I have lost a lot of interest in our trip to Stoke and as a result I’ve also lost interest in any potential opponents in the next round. I’ll probably wake up on Sunday morning and
change my mind which will mean I’ll make my way out to the supporters club to watch it but at the moment it’s become a hindrance in our quest for the league title.
The last round was only 3 weeks ago and at the time I was all for playing a strong team against West Ham because I thought it was our best chance of a trophy this season.However the spirit the
team has shown in the last few matches and the fact that we are now on top of the table leads me to believe that it just might not be worth it to play some of our better players against Stoke
with the 4 matches we have coming up directly afterwards. We have a trip to Aston Villa on Wednesday night followed by a home game against Manure on Sunday afternoon. After that we travel to
Chelsea the following Sunday and 3 days later Liverpool pay us a visit at the Emirates. If we make it to the 5th round of the FA Cup it will be played the weekend after that Liverpool game and
to be honest with our catalogue of injuries we will be lucky if we have 11 players fit by that stage. The players are dropping like flies at the moment and the chances are the boss won’t risk
the more important ones tomorrow.
Ahead of that game the boss has spoken about the media’s reaction to the challenge by Gallas on Davies and he says there was way too much made about it. I maintained that there was no intent
from Gallas and the boss agrees with that and he also said that it seems to be perfectly OK for other teams to announce before they play us that they will rough us up but if we make one mis
timed challenge the media are all over us like a rash. If we lose to these bullying tactics the boss is asked if we didn’t fancy the physicality of the game and the tactics of our opponents
seem perfectly acceptable to the media. We are always at or near the top of the fair play league and despite the chants of opposing fans we are not always cheating. The treatment we have got
from referees this season since Eduardo’s supposed dive against Celtic has been a disgrace and we have only had 1 penalty since then. We should have had 3 penalties in the last 2 games
alone(all for fouls on Cesc) but we are lucky that our players aren’t booked for diving when they are brought down in the box. We had to deal with the media witch hunt against Eduardo after
that Celtic game even though the likes of Rooney, Gerrard and Drogba have never had a sustained campaign like that about them despite their incessant diving. They are said to have made the most
of the situation but they are never subjected to what Eduardo was. It would be easy to be paranoid about this coverage but most fans think that it’s their club that is on the receiving end of
poor refereeing decisions and negative media reporting most of the time. Maybe the media should ask why managers of certain teams can refuse to give interviews to certain TV stations after
games or will only answer pre approved questions in press conferences instead of making a meal out of nothing when it involves our players.
Ahead of the game Ricardo Fuller has warned us that we can expect more of the treatment that they gave us at their ground in the league last season and it would seem that it’s quite OK for him
to say that. If I remember correctly we had 3 players injured in that game and Walcott received his kick to the back of the legs when the ball was well out of play. Sagna and the ex 25 were
injured too and if it’s OK for Fuller to say we will get more of that it should be OK for us to kick lumps out of him too. If I was the manager I would get the players to take turns kicking
Fuller and enjoy the sight of him limping off. The good news for the game is that Wilshere is available again and Campbell is in the squad too. Personally I hope Cesc doesn’t play as he has
worked his socks off in the last 2 games since he came back from injury.
There’s a little transfer talk about today as the Senderos to Celtic rumours continue and the boss refused to rule out a move for Smalling of Fulham. He said there had been no offer yet but
when asked if there would be one he just said yet is yet. Chesney has extended his loan spell with Brentford until the end of this month and Mannone is apparently considering a loan move to
Plymouth Argyle. The boss said we won’t be signing a striker as Bendtner will be back from injury shortly and he can fill that role.
There’s no changes to be made to your fantasy football teams this week as the Manure game at home to Hull is the final game of gameweek 22. All those Arsenal fans with Rooney as their
captain(you know who you are) will be hoping he does well but Manure don’t as a win for them would see them overtake us in the league although they will have played a game more than us. I’ll
preview the game tomorrow and attempt to give my line up for it as well as a prediction for the scoreline.
Here’s the highlights from our win against West Ham in the last round.
And to finish today’s title track from Jimmy Cliff. We have had 2 games against Bolton and we now face a trip to Stoke tomorrow. They, like Bolton, think they can intimidate us and kick us off
the pitch but as the song says “the harder they come, the harder they fall”.
See You Tomorrow.