So…What Was That Arsenal? 5-1

Article by e-Arsenal Correspondent Timothy Nolan

Follow e-Arsenal on Twitter here!
Check out the e-Arsenal Site here!

Sigh, I guess I’ll finally get around to talking about it…5-1. Five, one. It’s not exactly a score line which rolls off the tongue. It wasn’t much easier to swallow either.

I was so excited. My best friend had come over after school to sleep over and wake up for the early 7.45 am (US Eastern time) kick-off. We predicted starting XI’s, score lines, and I even thumped him in a few pre-match rounds of FIFA. There was no doubt on our minds that it was going to be an absolute cracker at Anfield.

How wrong were we. Atrocious, devastating, abysmal, laughable. Those were the words being thrown on Twitter and being shouted at my television screen after about 10 minutes. Two-nil and we’re ten minutes in? What am I witnessing??

Things only got worse. Four-nil was harsh on the Reds, to be honest. It could have been 6-0 in the opening 20 minutes if they had a bit more luck. Liverpool was running rampant. I was tempted to just go back to bed, to be completely honest. Actually, I was curious if I had ever even woken up at all, that this wasn’t just some sickening, sickening dream. SAS and the rest of the ‘pool XI were like freshly sharpened sabres, whereas the Arsenal XI looked like a bunch of wet noodles.

LFC stole our cannon, learned how to use it, and blasted apart our defensive fortress. They made sure that Captain Özil, and all of his trusty crew were completely under wraps. The Reds made the Gunners witness their destruction, and showed absolutely no mercy.

I’m not going to talk much about the match itself, I’ll try and avoid that completely. It was just barbaric on every level, and, admittedly, class from LFC. I do give credit where credit is due. After a consolation penalty and another Liverpool goal, the match ended a resounding 5-1. What’s done is done, and I was, in fact, not dreaming at all. I was simply living an unbelievable reality.

So where did it all go wrong? My analysis comes down to a few simple things. LFC took the match to us immediately, scoring on that set piece mere minutes after kick-off. After that, they showed the determination, the passion, and the willpower to beat the (then) league leaders, and do it handily at that. AFC looked complacent from kick-off. They never really did just that, “kick off.” They didn’t want it like the Reds did.

And what does it all mean? Well, it’s certainly disheartening. Is our season over? No, absolutely not. Is the title race over? No, absolutely not. No matter how demoralising the loss, we have to take it in stride.

We have to push on, and need a big result against that club from Manchester. We need to prove we’re not complacent, and we need to take that cannon back and build up that once impermeable Mertescielny wall. A win at the Emirates would mean so much to us. It’s vital points up for grabs in the title race, and potentially could sink the self-entitled folk at United even further. I want to stick van Persie’s face in the mud and make him upset and sing him a nice verse of “you’re a ****, Robin…” We’ll see, won’t we?

I want us to go on at the weekend and show Liverpool that we’re not a team you can bowl over so easily, that the 5-1 result and performance at Anfield was a bit more of a fluke than most think. I want something more along the lines of the 2-0 fixture in the fall, where we absolutely bossed LFC.

This run in will be tough, no doubt. But when the going gets tough, the tough get going. I have faith that we’ll start getting some results. City, Chelsea, and Bayern don’t want to face us, just like we don’t want to face them. We’re a forced to be reckoned with in World football, and it’s time to back up all of our talk.

Another note—this Liverpool side deserves to be back in the Champions League with play like that. I think that they’ll round out the top four, come end of the season. They certainly deserve it more than United or Spurs.

To conclude, I want us to bounce back. Hopefully Wenger will have us working on defending crosses before that next match on Wednesday…up the Arsenal.

© e-Football 2013 All rights reserved no part of this document or this website may be reproduced without consent of e-Football