Another Victory For Anti-Football

There is simply no other way to look at Sunday's match against Chelsea: it was a victory for anti-football; a defeat of flowing, beautiful football; the kind we all love to be treated to when we watch our team play week-after-week. And yesterday the lads delivered, but were humiliated in doing so. it was truly injustice at it's most supreme.

As harsh as the defeat may have been, you can't look at the match and say we played terribly; you honestly can't, not without lying to yourself. We started brightly, had our first chance inside 20 seconds, and had several more after that, and really should have been at least 2-0 ahead before they even had a shot on target. By all accounts, we were the preeminent team.

But then some bad defending from a free kick (which resulted from a Drogba dive, what else?) lead to us going behind. It was a shocker, and no one but the most biased of Chelsea supporters could say they deserved the lead. But I never felt too bad, I figured that with the way we were dominating and running the game we would be level in no time.

But Chelsea continued to defend resiliently, and we kept squandering our chances. And then before the break Chelsea went 2-0 up through an Anelka wonder goal. I could not believe our luck. And that luck continued in the second half when Toure put the ball into the back of our own net. He did nothing wrong: he had to try to tackle it away lest Drogba pounce, but it was just his luck that it swerved into the corner of our goal.

Still we ran the game, and when Bendtner came on we looked more dangerous than ever. We finally pulled one back through a headed cross (perhaps the way we should have tried to score all day) but then Chelsea got a solitary counter attack and scored perhaps their first and only deserved goal of the day. 4-1 was harsh, and it reflected nothing of the game.

From the scoreline you would believe that Arsenal were hapless and Chelsea brilliant (and so many of the papers are reporting it), but anyone who actually watched the game will know otherwise. We were the better team through and through, but we were far less clinical in the final third, and that, coupled with some bad defending (which in all honesty is to be expected when we're missing half our backline) led to our downfall Sunday.

It's hard to know where to look to find what went wrong Sunday. The attack was brilliant, if only they could finish, midfield was great attacking-wise, maybe not so good defending however, and our defense cannot I believe be blasted as being terrible in general: we were brilliant during January, February, and March.

But then it fell apart due to injuries, and that naturally leads to bad defensive performances; just look at Man Utd at the turn of the year when they lost much of their backline: they were dreadful. No team, no matter how much "depth" they have, will be the same defensively when half it's backline is missing. Full stop.

In the end I think the thing we missed most was lack of leadership on the pitch. I am and have always been very much in agreement with Arsene Wenger's apparent belief that players don't have to be old to be good or to win things. You can win things with kids, contrary to the popular statement, and last year proved that: we were brilliant until the psychologically devastating Eduardo injury, the effects of which I don't believe any team could withstand.

But this season something more was required. Kids are brilliant and can win trophies, but that has to be balanced by enough leadership to get the job done. Usually leadership and experience go hand-in-hand, and that's why older players are so often called a must for this team, but I don't think we require age as much as experience and leadership. Arsene Wenger said last week that he would try to bring in experienced players this summer to balance the youth in the team, and that is what is required. Not age, but experience and leadership. And with those qualities, I believe we have the potential to be as good or better than teams like Man Utd and Barcelona have been this season.

So what have we learned from the Chelsea game? Anti-football will continue to prevail as long as the teams playing beautiful football don't have the leadership and experience to overcome them. Man Utd and Barcelona did this season, and thus I'm thrilled that they've made up the Champions League final, but we this season did not. However all is not lost, and if we make the right purchases in the summer, I believe we will finally come of age next season and win something at last. Here's hoping for just that,

Fab 4