In recent times, whenever I watch Arsenal play, I can’t help but just imagine myself seeing Krusty the Clown. That’s because of the level of joke the club has become in such a short while. From coming to lose the league on many occasions with near misses to having a coach who would rather have our £350,000 a week creative midfielder sit on the bench while we suffer creativity in our squad, I can’t find anything better to make me laugh.
Apart from last night’s Carabao Cup encounter with Premier League leader, Liverpool, Arsenal is known for throwing away a comfortable lead (I can list more than five moments but that’s not why we are here). You can’t even be at peace when your team is two goals up because what’s two goals up when you can end up losing the match. Now I’m starting to feel it’s not an Emery problem but an Arsenal thing, but he was brought in to change things and not compound issues, hence the reason we should all be singing ‘Emery Out’ if we love this club enough.
This season alone, we’ve ended up blowing two goals lead twice. First, it was against Crystal Palace in the Premier League. We had been comfortably up by two goals, one goal in the 6th minute and another in the 9th but it was saddening to see we couldn’t even maintain that lead. Then again on Wednesday night against Liverpool in the Carabao Cup.
True we didn’t have the first goal. A mistake from Mustafi – an own goal which in my opinion wasn’t totally his fault – had put Liverpool in the lead six minutes into the game but it was amazing to see how we fought back quickly. Lucas Torreira got an equalizer in the 19th minute followed by a brace from Gabriel Martinelli in the 26th and 36th minute. We had the edge we needed. We had just one job. Maintain the lead. Yet, we blew it. A penalty from James Milner in the 43rd minute took the pressure on us up a notch, but we still had the game under control, or that was what I thought.
Ainsley Maitland-Niles scored one more for us in the 54th minute taking the lead to 4-2, again with a two goals lead but Liverpool fought back hard, and we were back to 4-4 in one of the funniest matches I’ll ever watch. One goal from Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain in the 58th minute and another from Divock Origi in the 62nd minute is what took Liverpool to be back in the game.
It wasn’t over for us because we still had it under control until Emery decided to substitute Ozil, the creative midfielder who was involved in three out of our four goals in the 65th minute, when we needed his input the most.
Somehow, and surprising enough, we managed to take the lead again in the 70th minute with a goal from Joseph Willock and it all looked like a win for us seeing how we held it till the 90th minute before Divock Origi burst our bubbles again with an equalizer. A development which had seen us lose and crash out of the Carabao Cup through penalty kicks.
In all of these, one thing was certain. We had a team who could not defend properly, a team that lacks the mindset to see a win and secure it at all cost and that might be the problem we’ve been having for so long but can’t recognize. To top that, we have a coach who would rather test his strategy with important matches.
Being an Arsenal fan is hard and I’m sure most of our fans will agree with me on this. It’s sad to support a team that cannot maintain a lead while expecting to win league titles. As much as we know that won’t happen, we can only hope for a change in the nearest future, and till then, we can continue singing the ‘Emery Out’ song to prevent us from continuing to watch his show of shame.
