Sometimes do you wonder why you bother to watch us away?
Sometimes does it seem worth it?
That was a conversation that we found ourselves having with a couple of mates yesterday both before (when I will admit, I just didn’t fancy us) and after the game (when my fears were proved right).
On the face of it there is nothing too badly wrong with a 3-1 loss at Arsenal, with Van Persie coming on and scoring two goals in the last 15 or so minutes, and the pundits, I notice again, were queuing up to give us the “get out clause” of the European “hangover.” However, loathe as I am to trot the same things out as I have already written on here, that’s 10 out of 62 away games we have won in the Premier League.
Our away problems are much longer term than some perceived hangover on European nights.
And yet, if only we had learnt the lessons of that first half, things could, should, and probably would have been different yesterday.
In the first period we didn’t look in any great trouble until the centre halves ball watched and Gervinho scored and we didn’t look in any massive trouble afterwards and crucially, we had scored, by making three unopposed headers.
This is not a good Arsenal side, it isn’t even as good a team as the one that thumped us 4-1 on the last day a few years ago, and their defence looked really poor. I tweeted on Saturday night that I wanted to see us have a go and for the latter part of the first half we had.
It was all set up for an assault after the break, then, and we could do what Sunderland did, couldn’t we?
Well, yes it was, but no we couldn’t and we couldn’t largely because we stood off and seemingly accepted defeat. We didn’t get the ball forward – and the once we did The Gunners keeper Wojciech Szczęsny and defence got in a mess and Jon Walters could have scored.
It’s easy to point the finger at Asmir Begovic and there can be little doubt he should have done better with both goals but it shouldn’t have got to that point. As a bloke sitting near me said: “Its all very well blaming the fella who doesn’t put the fire out, but don’t start the damn thing in the first place.”
Interestingly we were in our seats quite early yesterday and saw the keepers warm up. Asmir was shaky at best, dropping a couple over the line and letting one under his body. Thomas Sorensen was trying to gee him up and Keeping Coach Andy Quy was clearly worried, putting his arm around the Bosnian and chatting to him, whether this symptomatic of a loss of Begovic’s confidence I am not sure, but it certainly manifested itself during the game.
Moreover, though, I am tired of watching us do the same things away from home. The same old tactics that don’t work, and hearing the same excuses from the management. It isn’t good enough to write the way games off. We have spent on a lot of money, we have a lot of good players. We aren’t “little Stoke City
Lets be honest I could pretty much write the blog for the next away game at Bolton right now and I wouldn’t be far wrong I’ll bet.
My other passion is music. On the way home yesterday it was my turn to choose the songs on the Ipod. The last one I picked summed it up.
It had the chorus “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
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