The thing with this hectic October schedule means that the time between games reduces the amount of time we can enjoy, but I sincerely hope that this Monday morning everyone will still feel the warm glow of Saturday’s derby victory.
Yes, there is a long way to go this season, and we have a bigger fish to fry, starting next weekend against an unusually leaky Liverpool, but it was still a victory of some importance. Let’s not forget that they could have overtaken us if they had won, instead we extended our lead over them and stayed at the top of a league in which Man City look absolutely ridiculous.
I realize that soccer is not a game that awards points or prizes for artistic merit, and there is no one way to play it, but week after week, I’d rather see a team that is trying to be positive and proactive, than one that it is simply set to react to very specific situations in the game. It was horrible watching them as rival fans, and I can’t imagine it being particularly funny for their supporters either. Not that I care, obviously, that his suffering is eternal, etc., but when I think about what we’re trying to do, I can back him up pretty easily.
This team has come a long way and we still have a ways to go, but I think there is something fundamental about the type of football we try to play that has helped build the connection between the fans and the team. Arteta has worked hard on this, he has talked about it often, but for me it is also related to the way we are doing it. Arsene Wenger’s famous quote about caviar and sausage was pretty prescient in its own way, and somehow we’ve spent years chasing the dragon of the Invincibles and what came before: teams that were just as exciting and effective, and that won things along the way. road.
We loved the caviar, the sausage was fine, but there were periods when the sausage was on the turn, before we ended up with some thin mush. It keeps you going, but that’s about it. It is essentially the cyclical nature of football. The dominant team of one era is also the dominant team of the next, it’s a story as old as time, but the question has always been, when you go through that, what do you want to become?
Let’s not beat around the bush: there have been difficult times to get to this point, with Wenger, Unai Emery and Mikel Arteta. There are clubs that would have reacted differently to the bad runs of the current manager, and in the football culture we live in, not without reason. It wasn’t just the results, it was the way we played, and I admit I found it confusing at times.
He was so functional, pedestrian at times, lacking the kind of cutting-edge, attacking intent I expected from a man who played as an attacking midfielder for most of his career; that he was educated in La Masia; that he played for Arsene Wenger and worked with Pep Guardiola. Early in his tenure he talked about his desire to play 4-3-3, which he made sense, but it’s taken us a long time to get there.
I really think Arsenal fans, even those who sing about Arsenal 1-0 and remember and enjoy some of the successes when George Graham’s team became much more defensive than attacking, prefer to see a team like the one we saw in Saturday. If Wenger revolutionized the club when he arrived, timing was part of it, but another aspect was creating a footballing identity to be proud of.
There is always a balance, and sometimes it went wrong, but it was about being dominant in attack, scoring goals, controlling the game and the best Arsenal teams of my life played like that. Time passes, the game changes, but the desire to see that kind of football again remains. If it’s not the holy grail, you associate success with that style, and when you yearn for a team that can compete properly, you yearn for what caused that earlier.
So the way we play against Sp*rs in derby connects. The result is the most important thing, naturally, and if we had scraped off a scabby 1-0 I would be delighted, but as I said, the faith in the project, the growing confidence in the process, comes in the form of our performances. What we want to do, how we want to do it. Honestly, I think it would be more difficult if you had a coach who was more or less effective in terms of results, but whose vision of the game was at odds with this collective itch that we all need to scratch.
I enjoyed Edu’s comments to Amy Lawrence after the match (£), talking about what’s been going on lately:
“Once the team was rebalanced, it was time to take the next step,” says Edu. To emphasize he began to make a sprinkling action with his hands: “Adds quality… Adds quality… Adds quality…”
I’m all for spraying more quality on this team, because the platform is now there to do it effectively. Any victory in the derby is a good victory, but after the pain of losing the Champions League to them last season, revenge was not just a dish served cold. It was a reminder that if we stay on this path and continue our progress, there is potentially caviar to come.
Well, that’s all for this morning. James and I recorded Arsecast Extra last night, so all the links you need to listen/subscribe are below. Have a good.
