In a rare mood of optimism not commonly observed among Arsenal fans I had imagined that Arsenal would swat the just promoted unheard of club from the hinterlands of East Anglia (me neither) like the undeserving, above-weight punchers that they are and that I could sing paeans of such an imperious victory in a celebratory post cleverly titled "Nor which?". But, like the second half of the opening line of that infamous soliloquy, it was not to be.
Arsenal went into the game with their fate in their hands: win the next two games, seal the third spot beyond doubt. One would have thought such an incentive would have spurred the players on to come out of the blocks flying, get to top gear and so on. For about two minutes, it looked so. Just after the first minute, Benayoun scored from a pearler of a curler, drifting in from the left and finishing in the top right corner. 1-0 to the Arsenal. My optimism doubled and I opened my browser and typed in the words 'Nor which?'. (It said webpage not found. I had to then go to blogpost, sign in, click on create new post and type in the text box for titles the words 'Nor which'. But brevity is the soul of wit yeah.)
Having done that, Arsenal decided to relax and stroll around a bit having collectively come to the conclusion that the Norwiches of the world don't have it in them to stage any sort of comeback. Ramsey dawdled, Song cantered, Vermaelen started playing centre forward. Or def midfielder. And at times, right back. Norwich happily dominated the midfield and sent forth waves of attack that was entirely our doing. If we had kept pressing and kept our concentration things wouldn't have snowballed the way they did. Some idiot shot at Szcz who fumbled with the ball and let it bounce off his hands into the net. This gave Norwich the impetus and drive to attack even more. Arsenal continued to stay back and invited pressure. Ramsey went AWOL. Some sloppy passing in midfield resulted in a 3 on 2 situation and some other idiot shot at Gibbs, whose block looped over a stranded Szcz into the goal. 2-1. I closed my laptop.
To Arsenal's credit, they improved massively after the break although admittedly it was very easy to improve upon their first half performance. Ox was brought on to make the midfield more direct and give us more presence and Ramsey was taken off. The substitution took some time as Ramsey was nowhere to be found.
Right after the introduction of Ox we had more possession in the midfield and it looked like there was a bit more fluency in the way we played. Gervinho, who had earlier joined the anonymousolics anonymous along with Ramsey, became livelier as the game progressed and made a name for himself (heh). Rosicky began to play with more freedom and moved further up front. It looked to be a matter of time before Arsenal equalised. A matter of time went by and Song and RVP did their chip and volley routine to make it 2-2. Song dinked the ball over defence, like he has done n times this season, to find RVP who cleverly beat the offside trap (n times) and volleyed with his magic left foot (n+1 times) giving the goalkeeper no chance. Arsenal seemed to have learnt from their mistake and instead of relaxing continued to pile on the pressure and attacked in hordes. Gervinho did well on the left flank, beating two defenders with ease but only to waste it on a poor final ball. Coequlin bombed forward from the right, Vermaelen continued to play centre forward. Everyone was pushing for that winning goal and with so many options to score, it was RVP who scored again. Someone shot (think Gervinho), RVP collected the rebound and slammed it into the net to make it 3-2. I wept in joy and opened to check whether a draft of my post had been saved.
With 10 mins to go and Arsenal being Arsenal I knew nothing was certain. Song having put a stellar pass earlier on decided to keep going for the showboating spectacular goodness all throughout resulting in his giving away the ball in the most inexperienced of fashions. He lost the ball in our half, the Norwich goons were only too happy to try their luck one last time. Some idiot throughballed, another idiot shot past Szcz from a decently tight angle. 3-3. I wept. Songinho had let us down yet again.
Things went pear shaped post match yesterday but today's results have brought some much needed cheer. 10 man Spurs drew with Villa and as added bonus cheer that little fack Danny Rose was sent off. Newcastle lost to City and that means it is the our fate in our hands situation all over again. Win the West Brom away game, finish third irrespective of other results. Draw, then finish fourth and hope Bayern can beat Drogba (i.e Chelsea). Lose, weep.
I don't think I want to think of titles for the West Brom post yet.
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