It’s a good job we have such a big lead because we’re spluttering badly right now. We’ve lost three out of four and we’re playing like shit. You can twist it if you like and only use league results if it makes you feel better, but the games we lost recently aren’t exactly Plymouth in the FA Cup or PSV in a dead rubber are they? The games we’ve lost meant a lot and - irrespective of the competition - we came up short three out of four times.
The loss to PSG wasn’t deserved on the night of course, but we got absolutely fucking battered in the first leg and that was a huge red flag for me as I’m not used to seeing us dominated like that. Slot says it's because PSG are brilliant. Gonna look a bit silly if Villa knock them out, which I think they might. Regardless, our form is pretty grim at the moment and if our lead was five or six rather than eleven, I’d be shitting myself. It feels like last year all over again, when springtime came and we fell off a cliff.
I’m fighting with myself here because I really don’t want to overdo it with the negativity. After all, we are still on the brink of winning the league. Everything needs to be viewed through that prism and I keep telling myself that. It’s hard though when there seems to be such an air of… I don’t even know, I was going to say negativity but it’s not specifically that, there’s uncertainty in there too which is playing a part in how many fans are feeling.
There’s no buzz, is there? Eleven points clear would normally mean fucking street parties and greeting the coach before games, Kloppo fist pumping after every game and generally we'd just be in a carnival mood and looking forward to every game. There’s none of that though. I’m not just projecting my own feelings here either, I can sense it in the overall vibe in the fanbase. Inside the ground, outside the ground, on the forum, chatting to random reds in day to day life, there’s just no real buzz at all. It’s all very weird.
This is what we’ve waited decades for, and we’re on the brink of doing it but it's all incredibly flat. The travelling Kop tried to get into the spirit of things by belting out "and now you're gonna believe us, we're gonna win the league" when Macca put us ahead in this game, but within no time the players had shit all over the celebratory mood by gifting Fulham three goals inside 15 minutes.
I daresay the mood would no doubt be different if we playing well and marching to the title, but we aren’t. We’re just thankful that Arsenal can’t string together any sort of winning run and haven’t been able to all season.
Arne Slot has come in and he’s about to deliver the title in his first season. He can legitimately say to the likes of me “what more do you fucking want?” and he’d be right. He’s done everything that could be expected and then some, and me not being thrilled about how we’re doing it and finding a lot of the games (even the wins) a tough watch is not his problem, it’s mine. I feel ungrateful as fuck, but we can't help how we feel.
I can look at the league table and my head will say “this is great, it’s everything we ever wanted” and yet every other fibre of my being is finding the whole thing massively underwhelming and the uncertainty about where we are headed is also casting a big shadow over things. I don’t particularly know why, there are lots of reasons really and now isn’t the time or place for it.
I’d actually written about a dozen paragraphs that I’ve just deleted because it’s so negative and I really don’t want to get into a discussion about it or to have to try and defend my position. I’m sick of hearing myself complaining about stuff when we’re eleven points clear, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think the concerns are legitimate. I just think now isn’t the time to be airing them.
Basically, what it comes down to is I think that cup final has massively scarred me and skewed how I’m viewing everything. I’m still fucking fuming about that performance and some of the other stuff around it, but I need to try and let it go for my own sanity.
I shouldn’t be as down about everything as I am right now, so yeah I’ve deleted all of those paragraphs and I’m instead going to try to just stick to the Fulham game as much as possible and avoid any wider picture takes for the time being.
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