A good week that. Six points for the Reds but that's just a nice bit of dessert. The Main Course is Everton's impending doom which is edging closer with every game. I’ll refer you back to last week’s round up when I wrote:
“Another highly productive weekend for those of totally invested in the "get Everton to the Championship" challenge. It wasn't a perfect set of results but the likelihood of them going down increased and that's all I'm looking for each week now. One step at a time.”
The weekend was a small step towards that and midweek was an even bigger one. Overall, quite the week for anyone like me who is living and dying by the results at the foot of the table. At the end of each week I ask myself “is it any closer to happening?” and recently the answer every time has been “fuck yes”. I’m getting giddy now.
The Blues drew at Palace at the weekend which ordinarily wouldn’t be bad. The problem for them is that games are running out and they need wins. Southampton also got a draw, Leicester won and West Ham won. Other results may not have been perfect but at the end of the weekend Everton were in the bottom three, which will do me nicely.
Before I get to them though I’ll start with Southampton who surprised everyone with what they did at Arsenal. I keep saying they’re better than people think, and I probably had more belief in them than their own supporters did (that’s gone now after midweek but I’ll get to that). Not even I thought they had a chance at the Emirates though. It’s a good point for them but they could easily have won it. That would have really set the cat among the pigeons down there but alas it was not to be.
Arsenal have been naming the same team week in week out and I always said that the lack of depth would eventually get them. They’ve lost Saliba recently and Xhaka missed this game with illness. They’re bringing in Holding and Vieira, and that’s a big drop off in quality.
Still, it’s Southampton at home so that’s no excuse. They fell behind after 28 seconds when Poundland Pickford passed the ball straight to Alcaraz who lashed it past him. Alcaraz then turned provider to play in Walcott who rolled it in against his former club.
Zinchenko immediately got the whole team together in a huddle to get everyone’s head back in the game and Martinelli volleyed in to get them back to 2-1 within a few minutes. I think we all expected Arsenal to go on and win it after that but they were ropey as fuck and Southampton continued to carry a threat and Caleta-Car headed in from a corner to make it 3-1.
Odegard curled one in from the edge of the box to set up a grand finish and predictably Southampton wilted. Saka fired in to make it 3-3 and with eight minutes stoppage time they seemed certain to find a winner. Trossard hit the bar as Arsenal laid siege to the Saints goal, but the goal wouldn’t come despite the best efforts of Jesus to win a penalty by hurling himself to the turf any time he got in the box. There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, 'You can take the cheating cunt out of the cheating cunt club but… erm, you can’t get fooled again. Or something. You get the picture.
I defended Arsenal last week against the “bottler” jibes and I’ll do it again here, although it’s somewhat trickier to do that when they can’t beat Southampton at home in a must win game. The bottom line here is they’ve been over-performing and they took advantage of some good fortune that came their way. They were never going to be able to keep that up though and I’m fairly sure I’ve consistently said that throughout the season. It’s unfair to expect them to go toe to toe with City because they aren’t that good and they don’t have the experience needed to do it.
I wouldn’t say they were in a false position but things had gone their way to allow them to do as well as they had. They were able to pick more or less the same eleven every week, most of the time the team they came up against would be without a key player and they made the most of the breaks they got.
When the title race heats up and City are winning every game, that’s when Arsenal were always going to find it difficult and that’s what has happened. There’s no shame in it for Arsenal and they should ignore whatever nonsense is thrown their way by banter cunts.
Nobody has a leg to stand on when it comes to mocking Arsenal. Look at the table. Of all the teams playing by the rules, they’re miles ahead of everyone. They’re not bottling anything, it’s just football. It’s completely normal that you don’t win every game and will have some difficult spells in a season. What isn’t normal is the Abu Dhabi freak show cheating their way to ninety odd points year on year.
Arsenal aren’t the story here people. Hopefully more and more people will eventually see that now that it isn’t us being denied by City. Arsenal are the rightful Champions this year because they’re playing by the same rules the rest of us are. One team isn’t (actually two if we include Everton, but nobody does) and therefore anything they win is meaningless.
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