Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Two loses in a weekend is unbearable. First there was Barcelona which did not seem to want to win the game. Then came Arsenal who played no different, except loosing to an opponent they have dominated for years. I must say the most entertaining part is watching Piers Morgan during the pregame and half time show.

For the first time, I wish the take over of Arsenal by the Middle Eastern group would become true. After moving to the Emirates, Arsenal has played for 2-3 years within so called young players. Though have not been as dominant as they were during the invincible season, they managed to produce some good results.

Back in 2008, we were on our way to fight till the end for the title. But Eduardo's incident happened and suddenly everybody lost focus and we lost many games we should have won, including the game against Birmingham City. In Carling Cups, we were able to play beautiful and winning football using young players like Wilshire and Chamberlain. We still have many of those players today.

However, things have changed. With or without good players, we don't play the same type of football Henry was proud of playing. Maybe I have been comparing Arsenal to Barcelona. But, Arsenal was never this bad. Once a while, we see some pockets of brilliant. The most memorable game was the one between Arsenal and Barcelona in 2011 when we won 2-1. Yes, we still have Fabregas and Van Persie, but we played the best Arsenal had every played since winning the EPL in 2004. I think Arsene has lost confident in the style of play. The short passing game has changed to long inaccurate passes. We no longer hold possession for a long period of time. In current EPL standard, we could easily beat anyone if we just work on those short passes, and have players move intelligently towards the person with the ball.

Back to Barcelona. If they could come back from the 2-0 lost to AC Milan next week, it will be the greatest game of this season. We have not seen Barcelona do this for a long time because they are usually the leading team. And they have been beaten way too many times in the Champions' League. Someone need to step up and lead the team.


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