AND IT’S HELLO FROM ME

Welcome to East Lower, an Arsenal site for men who have recently waved goodbye to their twenties and are dashing headlong into their Grumpies. If, like me, you err on the side of caution – bordering on pessimism – then this blog might just be of interest to you.

So I wrote on May 20th, 2003 – my first ever East Lower blog post. And there you have it. Ten years of writing this blog. Bloody hell. It was as matter-of-fact a start as could be (and PS – what was I thinking aiming it only at men? It’s not like this blog is 40 years old. Womankind, please accept my apology). Back then I was but a stripling, and now I’m gone forty. Then, I had neither children, nor grey hair nor a bad back. Now I’m juggling all three.

I kicked the thing off just after we’d beaten Southampton in the FA Cup – our third consecutive final – and just in advance of perhaps Arsenal’s best-ever season. Good timing! Like many people I was an avid reader of stalwarts like Arseweb, but the let’s-blog-a-bit thinking came of course from Arseblog, who’s still at it hammer and tongs. How does he do it?

So in these ten years I have had the pleasure of a league title and another FA Cup in 2005, two lost European finals (2000 and 2006) and two defeats in the Milk Cup final (2007 and 2011). A good haul for ten years? Probably is, if you look at Arsenal’s history as a whole. But given where we were in 2004, and all the way back from there to about 1987, then I suppose it’s been pretty frustrating too. Since ‘Charlie’s final’ in 1987 until 2005 we never waited more than four years for a pot. We’re now on a niner. When you’re used to caviar and all that…

My live archives only go back to 2005, thanks to a monumental tech balls-up, but I do have the archived content sitting in a zip file (thanks to Arseblog Tom, so thanks, Arseblog Tom). Maybe one day I’ll get round to including them here. But given it’s taken me eight years and I’ve done nought – maybe not, too.

There have been some big moments though. This was quite good, which I wrote on 26th April 2004:

I, for one, have never seen an Arsenal team so rich in talent, so spirited, so great to watch as this one. We have played football that I have never seen played before. It’s been a stupendous season, a record-breaking season, and one which we must savour while we can. This kind of joy does not come along on buses.

Then the cup, against the run of play to be frank, in 2005:

To anyone offended by a profanity-screeching flat-capped lunatic, it was me, and I apologise.

There was the disappointment in Paris:

It was one of those days you’re just not going to forget. It’s taken us this many years to make a European Cup final, and now, having been there and experienced it, I can see what all the fuss is about.

And to continue a theme, the nadir of the Milk Cup in 2011:

It was a big test, and we failed it.

Thierry’s comeback goal was good, we’ve had non-stop European football, but now I’m plucking stuff from nowhere. As is the way with football, it’s a decade that has been peppered with both the glorious, the ignominious and all the stuff in between.

So what now?

Ten years is a long time and it’s fair to say that my enthusiasm has waned. Not for Arsenal – though the groundhog seasons do grind – but I’m definitely writing fewer and fewer posts. I started out with almost daily guff, but now fortnights come and go and I write nothing at all. So I did think about going out with a bang today, stopping right now, ten years thanks very much and goodnight.

But I’m not sure I’m ready to drop it completely – we shall see.

So anyway, enough of my self-flagellation. Thanks for reading (regularly – or a bit – or just the once – even by mistake).

Ten years. Blogging for 7.87% of Arsenal’s history. It really has motored past.

*puts on party hat*

One-nil to the Arsenal, and the relief is palpable. It was desperately close and not remotely good for the constitution, but we dragged ourselves over the line to fourth and into the final Champions League spot. That’s the 16th time in a row we have qualified for it. Did you know that? I bet you’ve never heard that and won’t read it again anywhere else. But it is worth repeating for posterity. Whatever you think of our annual race for fourth, you can’t deny that it meant something today, especially taking into account who the loser in this local feud was. But it was agonising.

One-nil has a certain resonance at our club, even if Arsenal veered off in other directions for many years since it became a badge of honour in the late 80s. It’s back in vogue though, partly I suspect in a needs-must kind of way. It’s been too close for comfort but even the most avid Arsenal change-merchant cannot fail to be impressed by the way we picked ourselves off the mat in March, when we lost in N17 (thanks to two defensive shockers), tweaked things and ultimately turned things around.

WWWWWDWDWWW. Nine wins and two draws in all, with 26 league points taken from 30. In that time our creativity has appeared stifled but we’ve defended well, fought well and stuck together. It’s not been pretty but it has worked, and it’s not a bad building block for the summer.

Ah, the summer. We all know what we need in order to push on, in order for this angst not to be an annual jamboree, but for now I think that can wait.

Until then we can marvel at the majesty of Laurent Koscielny, who put in an epic shift at the back today, scored the money-goal and is a shoe-in for our Player of the Season Since March award. Can he oust Santi for player of the season? I doubt that but he has been superb in recent months.

And while, yes, we gave the ball away too often for my liking, defended deeper and deeper and looked a bit toothless again, we never stopped hustling to win the ball back when we didn’t have it. There’s something to admire in that.

It’s all about growth for Wenger:

Since February 1, we have taken more points than anybody else in the league. I don’t believe that’s just down to coincidence, just to the fact that the group has grown. This team has grown throughout the season.

Certainly, there’s not much wrong with the team’s togetherness if you look at this photo from Arsenal’s own Stuart MacFarlane (though I do hope they’ve located Per by now).

I think it’s time for me to don my football sombrero, put my feet up and sip a pina colada. The transfer rumour mill can wait for now. The last few months have been interesting – encouraging – but am I sad the season is over? Not really, taken as a whole. Don’t take that the wrong way, because you probably know what I mean.

Bottoms up! Well done the lads. And breathe.

The Wigan game was no doubt fantastic for the neutral – ebbing and flowing like the tides – but it was hard work for the partisan until the triple-goal salvo. But here we are again and I have no idea what I think, if I’m honest. It’s desperately close.

What I do believe though – and it’s worth saying before fourth (or fifth, or third) is decided – is that irrespective of where we come this year, we are in as strong a position as we have been for several years to keep our pivotal players. We have been a selling club for a while now and as well as sending out the wrong signals, weakening our squad every summer has clearly also weakened the effect of buying new players, and has led to a lot of treading water. Last year we lost two key players, the year before two, in 2009 we lost two. Only in 2010 did we not shed too much.

If you look at who Wenger brought in last summer – Cazorla, Podolski, Giroud – all three have had very decent first seasons (and in the case of Cazorla, an outstanding first season). But their additions were mitigated by sales. The year before, we bought Mertesacker, Arteta, Jenkinson and Gervinho (plus others of limited impact, though perhaps I am being harsh on Benayoun) but we lost Fabregas and Nasri. Always fighting fires.

Now though, with perhaps fewer vultures circling, more money from TV and from Emirates and potentially also from a better shirt deal, we ought to hold a stronger hand.

Sagna, Vermaelen? Perhaps the former will go, and that would be a shame. But given his form and age, would that be as hard an exit as others have been? Jenkinson has done well.

Vermaelen we need to keep, frankly. You can’t prosper with anything less than three top-draw centre-halves.

Build on what we have, rather than react to departures – which is how it has sometimes felt – and we might end up with the stability and growth we crave. But another drawn-out summer exit saga – no thanks.

It used to be said that even when we were no longer winning stuff, we were still playing the best football in the league. That accolade has been quietly filed away and I am having to fast re-learn the art of grinding one-nils. We’re certainly defending better than we have done in ages. Mertesacker and Koscielny are impressing, Sir Chesney has come back in re-focused and there are options on both defensive flanks.

(PS – I wonder what Sir Ches’s dad thinks now? Credit where it’s due because dropping him worked).

The late George Graham era is so long ago that the mind plays tricks, but I basically remember it as being trillions of one-nils, with all of the goals coming from Ian Wright. It felt a bit like that last season too with almost forty goals coming from one player, but we’ve had to share things around this season. In this period of impressive results but limited goalscoring, we’ve had six different scorers sharing our last eight goals.

Even though his form has not been great, we’ve missed the waving arms and focal-pointiness of Olivier Giroud. Podolski can’t do that, Walcott can’t do that, and of the other two Arsenal players who could fulfil that role, one has forgotten how to play football and is warming the bench in east London and the other prefers coming out of nightclubs with his trousers at half-mast and driving the wrong way down streets.

We’re heading towards the relay finishing line with one baton pass to go. That baton pass has to go in our favour and if it does we need to run our arses off to the finish line. It’s a scenario with too many ifs and buts at the moment and I’d be lying if I said I was enjoying it.

What will posterity tell us about this game? Not, I suspect, that it was a curiously below-par performance despite an 80-minute numerical advantage. History will record it as a win. Three potentially crucial points for supremacy among the title unchallengers.

I do not deny that it would be preferable, having accelerated into some promising form, for us to be playing with a bit more swagger than we are. We looked sapped yesterday, as if the pressure was getting to us a bit. I wish there was a handy catch-all phrase that Wenger could come up with to describe playing in this way. Something that refers to us playing within ourselves. Perhaps something automotive. Anyway, here’s what he said:

We played a bit with the nerves, a little bit with the handbrake in the second half

The bottom line is that we won. What is a bit of a concern is that the goals have dried up a bit since thumping Reading. A 3-1 win against Norwich that could so easily have been a 1-1 draw. No goals against Everton and the solitary one yesterday. But 7 points from 9 – I call that efficient…

Red cards? Sidwell (Slidwell? Slidbadly) can have no complaints and I suspect Arteta will have a sore ankle this morning. And Giroud’s, while I think less dangerous, was still over the top of the ball. I can’t really envisage Arsenal challenging it but as someone asked on Twitter (and I forget who, sorry), is there anything to lose in giving it a go? Can the FA extend a ban if it considers the challenge to be spurious? I think it might be able to but I can’t remember.

Of course, Giroud’s card has a knock-on effect, banned for three games as he is. I guess in simple terms it opens the door for one of Walcott, Gervinho or Podolski to lead the line for a bit. Walcott’s form is such that I wouldn’t even go there. Gervinho simply doesn’t need the opprobrium that would inevitably be heaped upon him and Arsenal could do with someone more reliable in front of goal anyway. It’s Podolski all the way for me. Plus, he ought to be the freshest of the lot as he’s made his home in recent weeks on the bench. He’s probably the best striker of a ball at the club.

There are some huge games today but whichever way they go, next Sunday’s visit of the champions elect is shaping up to be a humdinger. They have a bit of a hoodoo on us right now. We’ll need to douse some WD-40 on the old handbrake if we’re to undo the hoodoo.

If I could sum up the reality of the last few games of the season, it would be ‘points first, performance second’. If we can end the season well – by which of course I mean *weeps silently at the thought of bygone eras* coming in one of the holy grail places – then we can worry about our deficiencies a little more calmly at a later date.

Glorious day here in London – go on, off you go the lot of you.

PS – This blog was brought to you in a 2002 gold Grimandi 18 shirt. Possibly my favourite shirt.

This morning’s leisure-wear twitter.com/eastlower/stat…

— East Lower (@eastlower) April 21, 2013

All that being said, being the inquisitive sort of fool that I am, I couldn’t resist clicking on Mr Mouse’s Predictortron. Is it on? Is it off? What is ‘it’ exactly? Why do I do this to myself?

And then I cast my eyes upon this tweet from Orbinho:

Previous tweets, look at our next 5 fixtures. Then look at results from those same 5 opponents last season. In equivalent games got 1 point

— Orbinho (@Orbinho) April 17, 2013

Gah! I suppose, on the one hand, the edginess of these late-season fixtures means that we know are playing for something. Cast aside for a moment the fact that yet again it’s the Fourth Place Trophy – there’s something at stake. As Wenger has said on numerous occasions, there’s a clear goal and the only way to guarantee getting to it is by winning all our games (never a realistic proposition – if only life was that simple).

But on the other hand, there are lies, damned lies and statistics. If I studied this stuff too hard I’d work my way into a wild frenzy.

I would summarise things by saying I am neither pessimistic nor optimistic. I might be a different kind of istic. I’m encouraged by more things now than I was after our defeat at our neighbours. But am I going to scale the flagpole in my victory trousers? No no no. I am not.

I can 110% guarantee that I’m going to take each game as it comes. It’s five games of two halves after all. We could do with scoring a few more early doors.

There are no easy games at this level.

A few days from it all does wonders for your soul – and it transpires that Arsenal haven’t done so badly in my absence either, with an I’m-away record of P2 W2 F6 A2. Perhaps I should leave the metropolis more often.

In fact, we’ve now won five out of six league games, a very decent and needed run of form ruined only by a time-honoured Defence-o-Wobble up at our friendly neighbours.

If Gervinho was the homme du moment – as they say in France, mark my words – last weekend, yesterday’s laurels go to our under-the-radar Pilsen-powered Tomas Rosicky. Did I foresee our Ivorian slotting one and creating two last weekend? Not in a month of Sundays. Could I envisage Rosicky dictating things both behind the goal and in front of it yesterday? Again, that’s a no.

But it’s fantastic to see unexpected players – the great unscorables – getting on the scoresheet at a time when it is needed most. It’s the Ljungberg factor – who can step up to the plate when the heat is on, a little bit unexpectedly, and go on a little run of goals.

Lovely goals too, yesterday – a bullet header and a rasper that needed a second, controlled rasper to be sure of things. Rosicky, amazingly, has made only two league starts this season (and scored twice). It’s a big old waste for a talent like his, though you can of course extend that sense of regret to pretty much his whole Arsenal career, not just this season. He pioneered the now well-known Arsenal trait of being out for a few weeks, only for it to be eighteen months.

But you need a few things to drop into place, and in the absence of Wilshere and Diaby, he has proved he is up for it, and up to it.

Naturally, this wouldn’t be Arsenal if we didn’t make things hard for ourselves – and we did again yesterday. It could have been a draw in the end – though we missed a few other chances ourselves too (no second touch needed, Aaron, and judging by your bouncing frustration when that ball drifted wide, you know it too). Mertesacker can have no real complaints about his red, but where there is pain for one player there is gain for another, and Vermaelen will need to see Per’s absence as his chance to get some form back. That’s how it should be really, and I hope there’s some work done on the training ground this week to sharpen up the now-smaller, but also more mobile, central defence.

But three points it was, and how we need them all at the moment. For the first time since what feels like an age, we’re sitting in the top four – albeit briefly.

It’s one-game-at-a-time territory, and it’s going to be nerve-wracking. Twitter might melt. I might go even greyer. But where there was despair a month or so ago, there’s definitely something to chew on now.

Onto Norwich on Saturday. More of the same, chaps, more of the same. Though less of the red card stuff, eh, Per?

I like to think that this is the very machine that our merry gang of defenders sat down in front of the other day in a bid to fix things defensively. You see, Arshavin, when he was trying to find a copy of his contract in the basement, had stumbled upon it in the storeroom that contains, amongst other things, George Graham’s old scarf, a somewhat dishevelled Glenn Helder and Paul Merson’s pool cue. Anyway, Andrey didn’t know what it was of course, because they didn’t use VHS in the Soviet Union. They were betamax all the way.

But Arsene knew, as he tends to – he’s got trillions of VHSs at home, all lovingly arranged in player alphabetical order (though Mrs W has now recorded Corrie over the top of the Stefan Malz scouting appraisal and Chamakh’s is being used to prop open the shed door).

Le Boss set it up and made them watch it. The video still sitting inside the machine had a segment of Tony Adams dropping Steve Morrow, followed by Nigel Winterburn doing passing practise with his right foot, a montage of Lee Dixon’s own goals, Steve Bould’s top ten near-post flick-ons and Martin Keown reminiscing about when he played midfield with Ian Selley. Taken together, it’s had the desired effect.*

*Except let’s not get too carried away. I was not the only one who got over-excited in early September when we point-blank refused to concede goals at all. Look at this, on the front page of the Guardian’s sport section.

Tempting fate in the Grauniad… twitter.com/eastlower/stat…

— East Lower (@eastlower) September 15, 2012

And we all know how it panned out after that. So if it’s alright with you, while I’m obviously encouraged that we’ve not let a goal in for two games and have looked tidy at the back, the proof will be in the pudding at the end of May.

But I do like the idea of a basement storeroom at Arsenal with loads of old trinkets in it.

I also like the idea of a rock-solid defence.

Though I don’t miss VHS.

Or Ian Selley (no offence, Ian).

Sorry about this, but this is what happens when there’s no Arsenal and it’s as cold as hell outside.

I thought we’d win in Swansea – based on nothing but the clutching of straws, probably – but my bullishness had started to fizzle out by the middle of the second half. Neither side created much and it wouldn’t have surprised me had it finished 0-0. A few high-scoring games aside (Reading, Southampton, Newcastle), we’re not scoring for fun these days. So when the goal came, it was after some huffing and puffing, and it was a bobbler of the first order.

I have to say, I love a bobbler. A scuffed slicer, one off the knee, or something bouncing off a player’s rear echelons. There are pirhouettes, volleys, 30-yard raspers and there are daisy-cutting scuffed-bobblers. I’m standing up for the latter.

It was a first goal for Nacho Winterburn (Nacho Winterburn, Na-cho Winterburn – thanks Nige) and boy did we need it. Then as if to turn the world as we know it on its head, a second came at the end from Gervinho, who hasn’t scored since the trees were in leaf, a goal set up by the oft-maligned (but in my view increasingly impressive) Aaron Ramsey. Substitution-tastic.

I’m not sure Fabianski could have had a gentler re-introduction to Premier League football – but things could have been different had Michu rolled a good effort a bit to the left. Overall though we defended pretty well again and whatever our weaknesses elsewhere on the pitch we do now boast real quality at full-back. Gibbs and Monreal, Sagna and Jenkinson. A lot of teams would kill for that depth.

We’re still a way off where we want to be, let’s be honest, and it’d be a fool who got too confident, but it’s been a good week – however bitter-sweet Wednesday was.

Heading into the ‘lull pointless and back to square one would have been no fun at all.

So those three points were sweet.

So yeah, no ifs, no buts, the Bayern game was good. It was on the biggest stage, it was gripping. I watched 7amkickoff’s video from the away end, and the happiness is insane.

It reminded me of my video of Thierry’s goalscoring return, against Leeds. Pure joy.

And then it reminded me of the bloke – no idea who he is, but I’d love to know – who lost control of his senses when Smudger scored in ’89. You watch it here at about 4m 20s – he leaps over the hoardings, and bounces off like a madman, arching his back, off the scale bonkers. The copper does his best Benny Hill going after him.

Ah yes – that’s what it’s all about. Like I ever forgot. Let’s have a bit more of that because I bloody love that.

And let’s have a bit more of that tomorrow*

*I reserve the right to be miserable again in the event of a poor result

And oh – here I am, on the Arsecast, trying to be a bit positive there too.