Clrnc wrote:
Its a bit sad to be clutching at cup wins as the only wins we have away from home against the bigger teams in the past 6 years. That's not where we want to be, and no matter how we spin it its a shocking stat
What's there to spin? It's a miserable stat and we've been appalling against top sides for nearly 15 years now.
We've had a few wins down the years but, more often that not, the game is already decided by half time. It's hard to pinpoint where this psychological shift happened but I'm going for 2007 at Anfield when Crouch scored a hattrick against us and it was just so unusual back then to see us be bullied, battered and second best. I remember feeling embarrassed that day and I got a lot of stick for that result because those kind of results just didn't happen to the Arsenal I knew. Since then it's only got worse, we've been humiliated by United several times - whether it's the 8-2, the CL knock out of 2009 or the time Ferguson played 7 defenders and still won. We've since lost our winning record against Spurs, barely compete at Stamford Bridge and, since Pep joined, haven't even got any good results against City. Plus anytime we play a big team in Europe - AC Milan, Bayern, Barcelona - you could be sure we'd concede around 3-4 goals over the 2 ties. We weren't even competitive in a Europa league final that was probably the most important game Arsenal played in the past 10 years. Oh but we were fun to watch right? Because we'd over commit players in attack and the opposition would just have to wait till we made a couple of individual errors and they'd score. It's been awful and I don't need Sky Sports to make it seem even more salacious. You pointed to Leeds doing well against City last week and putting in an attacking performance but, frankly, over the past 15 years there have been teams that got relegated who lost games by a smaller margin against the top sides.
Which is why I can't really get on board with the criticism of the way this team plays now. You could say that the Arsenal team of 2007 has nothing to do with this lot but I disagree - this acceptance of being second best has permeated the club. To my mind it's something that's only now being addressed. We're now very good at defending corners and free kicks, individual mistakes have been banished, we defend as a unit, I don't have to switch off games at half time, bang average players like Xhaka, Holding, Mustafi are playing above themselves and we've played 20% of our games against Liverpool and City since Arteta took over and managed to get a result half the time. For the first time in 15 years, there's tangible and consistent progress.
Long term this isn't good enough and maybe Arteta won't be the right man to lead us in 21/22 if we don't make the same transformations in the final third but at the moment if his enduring legacy is that I don't have to switch off at half time when we play City or Liverpool then I'll take it. Mid-table realism indeed.
