Arsenal
Arsenal End of Season Review 2013/14 Part 1
By Eduardo
June 7 2014
Now the excitement of Wenger's 5th FA Cup Trophy win has perhaps died down, I say perhaps as quite a few are still celebrating, and why not, it is time for the famous Arsenal Times End of Season Review.
No expense has been spared as we bring you a multi media blow by blow detailed account of the whole season. It is delivered in three parts, One, the first part and the shock start, the second part after Xmas and the end of title hopes, and a third part the road to Wembley and player of the season. Over to you Eduardo:
Part 1 The First Half of the Season
The season started against Aston Villa at the Emirates, after a summer that had seen no important player leave Arsenal, but also no major expenditure on new players, with only a compensation fee paid for young French player Yaya Sanogo. Also coming in was loan signing Emilio Viviano, and Bosman signing Mathieu Flamini. Fans were uninspired with the transfer dealings, failed bids for Higuain and Suarez, had stirred up hopes up for a big money striker signing, only for them to be dashed. So the season started with most Gooners entering the season more in hope than expectation.
What transpired on the opening day of the FAPL season, shook most of the hope out of all but the most optimistic, a 1-3 defeat after Arsenal took the lead. Not even the inept performance of the referee was enough to stem the anger born out of the frustrations of the lack of signings, especially felt by some who had bought into the hype of the £100M worth of signings made by Tottnum.
The end of the world was nigh. Arsenal would never win a game again, an exit from the CL at the hands of Fenerbache would confirm this, after all they were no mugs and had all the weapons needed to dump our awful lot. A 0-3 away win and a 2-0 home win, either side of a 1-3 away win at Fulham was a good way for the team to answers their critics. But then again Fenerbache are a piffy little outfit who would not beat snow off a rope and we always win away at Fulham, right. The real test was on its way, a North London derby v Tottnum at the Emirates. After all they were now serious titles contenders, big spenders, ambitious and with a dynamic young manager, oh woe is me. Some sanity was restored to the Arsenal faithful when Giroud scored for the fourth time in five games to give Arsenal the win.
Transfer Window Closes with Ozil in the bag
The feel good factor went into overdrive with a Club record £42.5M signing of Mesut Ozil, the highly talented German playmaker. Only increased by the news that Tottnum selling their star man Gareth Bale to Real Madrid allowed this big transfer to happen.
The feel good factor rolled on for another three straight wins, Sunderland (A) 1-3, Marseille (A) 1-2 and Stoke (H) 3-1. Ramsey in particular having a storming goal scoring start to the season, something he kept up for all the season he played in, which sadly was not enough, but more of that later.
Next up was a 1-1 at West Brom, in the Capitol One Cup, as usual a few youths got a run out, and did well, Arsenal winning a penalty shoot out to progress, something we would gladly see again before the season was out.Back in the serious stuff, Arsenal ran off routine wins over Swansea (A) 1-2 and Napoli (H) 2-0, best remembered for a great opening 20 minutes of sublime football, and Ozil’s first Arsenal goal.
We then had our second visit of the season to the Hawthorns, this time in the league, and again it was a 1-1 draw, but no shoot out this time to earn the win. Normal service was resumed at home to Norwich, a classy 4-1 win, noted for Jack Wilshere’s wonder goal that would earn him numerous Goal of the Season awards, the goal was a real team effort with several one touch one twos involved. A true delight of a goal.
Doubts Resurface
Some doubts about the team surfaced on losing to Borussia Dortmund at home 1-2. Arsenal had been by far the better team on the night, but naively blew it chasing a winner only to allow the Germans to break away and score the winner. Naïve and soft centre were words bandied about.
Crystal Palace were dispatched back to Shelhurst Park with little fuss 2-0, before those nagging doubts surfaced again, this time at home to Chelsea in the Capitol One Cup, a 0-2 loss, in what was a poor match, Arsenal with large possession stats, but little else, Chelsea with the goals, those words naïve and soft centre mentioned again.
Liverpool were our next visitors, Ramsey’s outstanding long-range goal the standout memory of this 2-0 win. Then came our first real test of the season, away to Dortmund, yeah I know, we had already played Tottnum, Chelsea, Dortmund, Napoli, and Liverpool, but for some unknown reason every time we played what was considered a good team, it was deemed our first real test of the season. Anyway despite Dortmund this time having most of the possession and pinning us back for long periods of the game, Arsenal showed real character to win the game 0-1 with the on fire Ramsey again the goal scorer.
Next up was a visit to Old Trafford to play the out of sorts Man Utd, the transition from the red nose one to the chosen one was not going smoothly. Trust Arsenal to give Moyes a helping hand, the fact that the Arsenal camp had been hit by illness, attributed to a flu vaccination, with Mertesacker unable to play, and others playing despite being ill, and missing the next match, it was of little consolation to Gooners who witnessed an awful tepid performance with little heart or desire or belief shown by nearly all the team, as we fell to a 1-0 loss.
Arsenal showed bouncebackability (yeah I know a stupid word), when running off four straight wins, Southampton (H) 2-0, remembered for Giroud forcing a silly mistake from their keeper, Marseille (H) 2-0, a Wilshere double, and Cardiff (A) 0-3, that man Ramsey again with a double. Hull (H) 2-0, Bendtner scoring after 2 minutes on his first league start of the season.
Mini Slump
This run of four wins was followed by a mini slump of four games without a win, Everton (H) 1-1, letting in a late leveller made it feel like a defeat, Napoli (A) 2-0 was a costly defeat as it meant ending second in the group and a tough knockout round draw, Man City (A) 6-3, not the awful performance the score line suggests, in fact a good performance ruined by a one sided performance by the officials, two offside city goals wrongly given, an Arsenal goal wrongly ruled out for offside and a clear penalty not given, all big calls, made in City’s favour, Chelsea (H) 0-0, the blues came for a point and got it, the tone was set for Arsenal’s next performance after a high scoring defeat, a draw it would be.
This mini slump was followed by a run of seven wins in a row, bouncebackability if you will. Three straight wins in the league, a comeback win over West Ham (A) 1-3, some great play in that one, Walcott with a double and Podolski with a great strike, then Giroud had the winner over Newcastle (A) 0-1 and a 2-0 over Cardiff (H) seen two very late goals, the opener from Bendtner in the 89th minute and Walcott kept his good scoring run going with the second.
End of Part 1
Part 2 click on link at botton of page
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014:06:10:17:56:51 by Padre Pio.
Since the end of WW1, 1919, when the FA restarted its 4 tier football league, with Arsenal fc in the 1st div, there’s only ever been one club to have never been relegated from Div 1/ EPL.
Arsenal fc
Let’s keep making history
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
I loved:
Quote:6-3, not the awful performance the score line suggests, in fact a good performance ruined by a one sided performance by the officials, two offside city goals wrongly given, an Arsenal goal wrongly ruled out for offside and a clear penalty not given, all big calls, made in City’s favour
We could have scored 6 or so ourselves but at times they were ripping through us at will and could have scored 10.
Amazing how much better we did than anyone expected. So much so, that not winning the league was deemed failure!!
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