What I noticed in this 2022/23 iteration is the maturity in the manner they celebrate goals . . . a champion team’s innate understanding that this moment, no matter how glorious, is just a small step in a longer game and much longer season. Continue reading Arsenal’s Prescient or Exaggerated Start
Arsenal would be a disaster without Alexis Sanchez. He runs and runs and runs, as if he has something to prove. If all the Arsenal players had the heart and work rate of Alexis, the team would be invincible. Özil, after a second major injury in as many years, decided that he had to grow up a bit and came back a completely different player. He’s put on heft, and sometimes you have to look closely to confirm that it’s him you see chasing down the ball. Özil realized that he had to play the game in a different, more … Continue reading Player of the Season: Francis Coquelin
There’s little like it. Grown men in absolute joy after winning a title. Jumping up and down like ten year olds. It forces a smile; the happiness is contagious. But there is sadness in the Arsenal celebrations. Disproportionate, it borders on obscene. This is not the first time Arsenal have reacted to a victory as if they’ve been crowned kings of Europe. Or the Premier League. What is worrying is that they seem to mistake these victories as more sufficient than they are. Worse still, as if they indicate some achievement greater than they do. Some profound step on the … Continue reading Arsenal’s FA Cup Win: Hollow Celebrations
Before Özil, there was Theo — for me. Two games, four goals. This last one, taken with the weaker foot, was a pure delight, and won Arsenal’s most important game of the season. There’ll always be Theo, I so do hope. Awfully good to have you back. ©TW Matters™ 2022 Continue reading Good to Have You Back, Theo
This past weekend, Reading’s goalie, Adam Federici, by all accounts, kept his side in the semifinal FA Cup game against Arsenal with save after save. Goalies have a way of single-handily changing a game in this way. I did not like Reading, to be honest. Their approach to Arsenal was to bully and foul — what we have grown accustomed to as teams’ general tactic against Arsenal. But Federici’s display was unaffected by this borderline thuggery. He was stellar and outstanding. Except for that final moment. When he wasn’t. When a ball dribbled slowly off his body and slower still … Continue reading Football’s Lonely Position
I spend so much time reading about Arsenal these days, it’s embarrassing. Of course it has a lot to do with their recent run of form. Actually, truth be told, the form is as miserably inconsistent as always; but they have been winning. And the chance of them ending up Second wakes me up at Four in the morning to watch the game. More truthfully, it is the glimpse of potential greatness that has me obsessed. I actually see the possibility of a title, with a few additions, and deletions. Gibbs and Ramsey and Wilshere, along with Mertesacker, Arteta are going … Continue reading Arsène Wenger: On Beauty, and Virtue, and the Journey
In England, they call it spirit. We call it heart. You can have all the skill, all the intelligence in the world, but without it, you will crumble. Arsenal found some yesterday, tying Man City 1-1, both teams missing goal opportunities that could have won it. And yesterday, Chelsea, well, let’s let Mourinho tell it– We lost against a team who are difficult, but against a team who were better than us in terms of spirit and mentality. That’s the last thing my teams are usually guilty of: normally, they don’t lose because the opponents are stronger in terms of … Continue reading Heart and Spirit
Been regretting my recent conclusion that Arsène Wenger should step aside because, frankly, he comes across as a good guy. A nice man. I don’t know him, of course, but there has been nothing about the way he has conducted himself that suggests anything but a quality individual. He is thoughtful and reflective, balanced and nuanced. He suggests honesty, and the most important quality of all, integrity. You can have a coffee with him, or a pint, and likely find much to talk about. He strikes me as that professor we use to like talking to. His pregame responses this … Continue reading Good People Fail
Last week I fretted that Arsenal’s squeaker victory over struggling Tottenham was a sign of being on borrowed time. And this weekend, the club celebrated its one thousandth game under Arsène Wenger with a shellacking–its own–from what they had declared, from coach to player, the most important game of the season. It was over in five minutes, with Chelsea’s second goal, and certainly within fifteen, when a red card for a penalty-area handball reduced the side to ten and the consequent penalty increased the lead to three. But to be frank, even the first goal seemed to give Chelsea an insurmountable … Continue reading Arsenal: Fourth at Best
It is difficult to feel assured by Arsenal’s first North London derby victory yesterday over Tottenham at White Hart Lane in seven years. There was nothing of the controlled, counterattack football of a Chelsea, which can make countering football seem dominant; but instead we witnessed a type of frantic, hold-on-to-your seats school-yard defense that prevailed in Man United’s annoying win over Arsenal earlier in the season: hanging on for dear life to a lucky first goal that came early the match, in this case around the minute mark. Lucky not in the sense that Rosicky’s goal was not brilliant, because surely … Continue reading Arsenal v. Tottenham, 1-0: Living on Borrowed Time
Sense and Nonsense 