Are Arsenal finally on the road to success? HITC blogger and Gooner Mohammed Asim believes a taste of silverware is not far away.
Arsenal’s financial status is a well respected in the footballing world, it probably is one of the very few sporting organisations to make profits and upgrade itself in all aspects to next level, and yet be stable competitively.
And it is no co-incidence that during this period of financial turbulence Arsenal has seen a major trophy drought, which, is getting itchy to the fans and giving rival clubs reasons to point fingers at a club which oozes class in all aspects.
The slump and the drought which has become a part of modern day Arsenal, and fans hate to see us getting stereotyped with trophy-less seasons. But, this drought has followed us since the move to Emirates stadium, which people call Emirates-Jinx, lets analyse it sensibly.
Since the move to the new stadium, Arsenal had to cut down on a lot of expenses, which included the hefty wages of players – the likes of Pires, Vieira, Henry, and so on.
A great manager moves on with the available resources to make a team good enough to fight the battle with new stars and new heroes, and this team has befallen the fate of players chasing greed over stability- with the the likes of Adebayor, Hleb, Gallas, Nasri, and Cole to name a few.
Facing challenges and betrayals – I hate to say it, but, read: Cesc Fabregas – and after a disastrous start to the season, we are, competing for the second place (too optimistic) or third (realistic), while clubs which have spent 100 times more than us (no exaggeration) have become a joke financially. (Read: Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea).
Now it finally looks like the time when Arsene Wenger’s trust in his policies is finally returning favours. Since late February, we have:
1) Avoided a potential 13 point deficit to face going eight points ahead tonight of our lesser North London’s rivals- Tottenham.
2) Produced a dramatic comeback over Milan at home. A little more luck and we could have been on the path to Barcelona revenge.
3) Won nine of our last 10 league games on the bounce..
4) Late comebacks in several games in the period, which never looked possible in last couple of seasons at Arsenal, showing a fighting spirit.
5) Been less reliant on captain Robin Van Persie’s goals.
The future looks bright, but only if Wenger manages to hold on to each of these following players:
Robin van Persie, Tomas Rosicky, Theo Walcott, Mikel Arteta, Jack Wilshere, Bacary Sagna, Per Mertesacker, Thomas Vermaelen, Wojciech Szczesny, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Alex Song, Kieran Gibbs, Andre Santos, Francis Coquelin.
And an addition of Podolski will be magical. Its not long, the Gunners will be blazing to the unimaginable heights again.
I’ll keep gunning on twitter: @asimgunner
What do you think- Are Arsenal finally getting there or is this a false dawn?
image: © Ronnie Macdonald
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