Football news - The Warm-Up: Arsenal fans feel a strange and unusual sensation...joy
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Updated 10/12/2019 at 08:53 GMT
It's been a good while, but after an hour of desperation Arsenal finally got a win, for the first time in two months. Lordy...
Nicolas Pépé of Arsenal FC celebrate with his teammates Gabriel Martinelli, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Granit Xhaka after scoring goal during the Premier League match between West Ham United and Arsenal FC at London Stadium on December 9, 2019 in Londo
Image credit: Getty Images
TUESDAY’S BIG STORIES
Arsenal win! Arsenal win! Arsenal win!
To put into some perspective just how very long ago Arsenal’s previous victory was, Unai Emery was still their manager. That 3-2 ROMP against Vitoria Guimaraes in the Europa League sure does feel like a long time ago now, but on Monday night they broke their nearly two month-long duck by coming from behind to beat West Ham 3-1 in the typically cauldron-like atmosphere of the London Stadium.
Still, for 60 minutes of the game, you could have made a pretty convincing case that Arsenal would never, ever taste victory again, so bad were they against a pretty rotten West Ham side, and nobody sensible would have disbelieved you. They were 1-0 down at the break, a goal conceded in a manner befitting the occasion – which in the first-half at least was a festival of incompetence – Angelo Ogbonna credited with the goal which went in off Ainsley Maitland-Niles who was trying to duck away from blocking the effort in the first place.
At that stage Arsenal looked utterly desperate, devoid of hope, skill, determination, confidence…actually, just pick a positive adjective, any one you like: Arsenal didn’t have it. They were heading for a tenth straight winless game, just four points above the relegation zone with a truly ugly fixture list to come. Thoughts of relegation, while remote, genuinely weren’t fanciful.
But then on the hour mark Gabriel Martinelli – one of the few positives from this bin fire of a season – lost his marker (England’s great hope Declan Rice, no less) and equalised, then Nicolas Pepe curled in a sumptuous strike from the edge of the area, before Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang slotted in his 11th of the season (46% of Arsenal’s league goals) to seal an extraordinary nine minutes.
Interim handsome manager Freddie Ljungberg wasn’t getting carried away afterwards. “Of course you always hope,” he said when asked if this win could spark something in this Arsenal team. “But I try not to get carried away because I still feel there are things we need to work on. We’re not near where I want us to be.”
However, things weren’t all rosy, as reports of the sort of abysmal conduct we’re sadly getting used to at football games emerged from the visiting support, both antisemitic and sexist chanting heard in the stands and when a female physio entered the field to treat Arsenal’s Kieran Tierney, the wolf whistles were clear as day for all to hear. A reminder that while we correctly treat football as an escape from the more serious things in life, it’s still very much part of an extremely fetid world.
Cancel your plans for a lovely old evening of Gazprom
Watching football these days, you’re often struck by the troubling sense that you’re merely a corporate shill, suckered into watching what amounts to a product dreamt up by some marketing wonk which bears very little resemblance to the game we all fell in love with when we were too young to know better. The Champions League in particular, with its financial inequality and confected structure which is designed to allow the richest and most powerful progress with the least trouble possible.
But then you contemplate a night like tonight in the competition, and you’re ordering a Heineken with your Mastercard, but only one because you’ve got to drive your Nissan filled up with Gazprom to go buy some Pepsi and a PlayStation using money in your Santander bank account.
Tonight’s games feature two of the key ingredients that make top-level football these days entertaining: big, powerful clubs, and peril.
To summarise: Liverpool need a point to secure qualification for the second phase, as defeat to Red Bull Salzburg would see them depart to their fizzy pop-fuelled opponents; Chelsea have to beat Lille to go through, otherwise they are relying on Ajax to do them a favour against Valencia; Borussia Dortmund and Inter are level on points and duking it out for the second spot in their group with the latter hosting Barcelona and the former facing Slavia Prague; and then there’s Group G, which could see any combination of RB Leipzig, Zenit St Petersburg and Lyon qualify.
So in short, hook as many of those UEFA sponsors to your veins as you can, and enjoy the chaos.
Don’t put extra pressure on Rashford Ole…oh for f…
Marcus Rashford is doing pretty well at the moment, isn’t he? The goals are flowing, the performances impressive, and it’s easy to forget that despite being around for a few years, he’s still only 22 and in theory only learning the game. Which is pretty terrifying but also perhaps a sign that we shouldn’t put too much pressure on him by hastily comparing him to previous Manchester United greats.
So presumably when it was put to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer that comparisons could be made between Rashford and Cristiano Ronaldo, he straight-batted the question and insisted that these sort of things are very premature and let’s not be too hasty, right?
It’s very easy to compare the two of them, yes. Both with skills, body shape, attitude, attributes – everything. The boy has every chance in the world to become a top, top player. Let’s hope he continues like this.
Oh, bloody hell, Ole…
IN OTHER NEWS
Are Tottenham’s social media team milking Son Heung-min’s goal against Burnley at the weekend…?
…well, yes, but if you’re going to milk anything, make it a goal like this…
HAT TIP
These are the lingering concerns that proliferate around a result such as Arsenal’s 11-1 drubbing of Bristol City over the weekend. A WSL record win was dominated by Vivienne Miedema’s six goals and four assists, enough to leave anyone scratching their head as to how a player currently averaging 1.5 goals and one assist per 90 minutes only managed to come fifth in the Ballon d’Or. But is the Women’s Super League uncompetitive? And which direction is its competitiveness going?
For the Offside Rule, Jessy Parker-Humphreys crunches the numbers and looks at whether the WSL is becoming less competitive.
RETRO CORNER
On this day in 1994, which we’re thoroughly alarmed to report is 25 years ago, Matt le Tissier scored this absolute woof of a goal against Blackburn, which was obviously the 94/95 goal of the season.
COMING UP
The Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaampions. It’s a belting night of action in Europe, and a word to the wise: if you’re in a household where you have to be careful about using up your credits to watch football, make sure you use yours this evening, because that’s when all the good stuff is: Wednesday’s games are largely dreck.
And all of those games will be rounded up for you by Mr Ben Snowball tomorrow morning.
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