It's been hard to motivate myself to write anything at all since the chelsea disaster. Games and talking points have come and gone. We've had the carling cup drubbing at the hands of city, followed by more embarrassingly ungracious behaviour by Wenger; the comfortable victory against Stoke in the league, when Arshavin finally found form as an emergency centre-forward; and an outing for the "young guns" in Greece, which showed that the reserves have learned pretty, ineffective football as the first-team, and that carlos Vela may be in danger of becoming the new Jeremie Aliadieire.
Every time I tried to gather my thoughts on the above into something coherent, there was a festering feeling of pointlessness. As if none of it really matters after the team's flaws were so ruthlessly exposed. You can hope, if you are so inclined, that lessons will be learned after such a painful result. But think back a few months- there was that home champions league tie against United in which the boys failed to perform, and got destroyed. Days later, chelsea scored four at the Emirates. And now this. I invite anyone to show me the proof of progress there. So much of the manager's rhetoric rings hollow in the face of these powerful facts.
The sad thing is, we shouldn't be far away. I'be been saying it since the end of 07/08, when Flamini left. He had to be properly replaced, he wasn't, and we've been paying for it ever since. If we had the right players in a couple more areas, I could say with genuine hope that Liverpool are out of the race, that United look vulnerable without Ronaldo, and that chelsea are due a mid-season blip. All of that is true; but it doesn't, or shouldn't, matter to us now because Arsenal have no chance.
It's a sad state of affairs when a once great man allows hope to become the preserve only of the blind.
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