Please wake me up when it's all over!
After having stepped back in time,
for our cup outing to the surreal, but refreshingly civilized non-league
surroundings of Gander Green Lane, where one can still smoke in the stands,
queue up for a cuppa while keeping one eye on the match and even pop out to the
pub for a halftime pint, the postponement of last weekend’s outing to
Southampton (not to mention Spurs emphatic trouncing of the Potters) ensured
that we were all impatiently slavering in anticipation of Saturday’s trip to
the opposite end of the footballing spectrum.
I was optimistically hoping that a
fortnight with their feet up might result in a revitalized, “our season starts
here” reboot. Yet the oppressive-looking storm clouds hanging over the towering
new main stand, which lends Anfield something of a disjointed feel, were to
prove portentous. Our mood took a dramatic dip, as the terrace tom-toms
transmitted the unfathomable news that our star turn had been left on the bench
and our enigmatic playmaker hadn’t even travelled, with Özil allegedly
suffering from yet another bout of flu (doubtless the poor love is sweating it
out on a beach in Dubai as I type!).
Allegedly Alexis’ frustrated watching
remit was part of Wenger's tactical masterplan to enable the Gunners to be more
direct. Sadly Arsène’s tenuous grasp of reality was evident right from the off,
since a team can’t play direct, or otherwise, without the ball at their feet.
With Sanchez pretty much solely responsible for this season’s rare sparks of
electricity, without him the Arsenal seemed so apathetically uninspired that if
we were a coronary patient you’d be calling for the paddles…stat!
It was hardly a surprise that Klopp
got a reaction out of his troops on home turf, after their tepid defeat to the
Foxes, Yet while I’ve endured enough misery over the years at Anfield to know
there’s no shame in losing to a Liverpool side that invariably turns up against
top-six opposition, I simply can’t abide the fact that we threw this game away,
whilst sleepwalking through the first-half.
Sure the two-week furlough might not
have done us any favours, but frankly, if players can’t get themselves suitably
pumped for a match of this significance and at the very least, attempt to match
the opposition’s intensity level, to my mind this is symptomatic of the lack of
appetite of side that’s been getting away with merely going through the
motions.
Wenger might be indignant at having
his competency questioned in his dotage, but if he doesn’t resign surely we can
have him committed, on the basis that Alexis’ omission was blatant evidence of
his dementia? Firmino’s goal after only nine minutes merely confirmed our
tortoise-like emergence from the starting blocks. It couldn’t get much glummer
in our corner of the Anfield Road end behind that goal, as we suffered the
infuriating sight of an Arsenal midfield ambling back, hardly busting a gut to
recover their ground and the stark contrast with the opposition’s dynamic
attacking zest.
Although Welbeck and Iwobi were both
at fault for the Scousers’ second, I once again found myself focusing on the
flatfooted mental and physical inertia of Xhaka. There’s a growing consensus
that in Xhaka, Wenger has implanted in the corpus Arsenal an entirely
superfluous, £35m appendix, albeit one that’s seemingly set to burst on a
regular basis.
The only consolation about conceding
a second was that at least it forced Wenger’s hand, as there was more
conviction about Alexis’ halftime warm up than the combined first-half efforts
of his team-mates. Much as it saddens me to admit it, in Sanchez’s shoes I’d
want out, as the Chilean is so obviously a winner that it’s no wonder he’s
grown increasingly intolerant of being surrounded by such mundane torpor.
At least we enjoyed a brief period of
hope, as Liverpool anxiously withdrew into their shell after we pulled one
back. I felt sure we’d be carved open, when Arsène went “all in” with fifteen
left on the clock. But when Origi’s effort bounced harmlessly off the post, I
wondered if we might end up escaping with a fluky point. Depressingly, instead
of mustering a “kitchen sink” push for an equalizer, much like our season to
date, our afternoon fizzled out with a whimper, as Wijnaldum applied a deserved
coup de grace.
Does Arsène’s increasingly antagonistic mood reflect his growing acceptance of the loss of Gooner good faith and the fact that he’s no longer only one good result away from getting the majority of us back on side. If so, I wish he’d announce his impending swansong instead of dragging his resignation out to the death. It might be the only means of galvanizing a unified effort to send the obdurate old bugger off with a bang!
email to: londonN5@gmail.com
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