Na Na Na Na Na

By Boris Mellor
December 5 2010

As the Arsenal faithful streamed out of the stadium they sang, or rather murmured in disbelief, “we are top of the league”. It wasn’t in the script, not just because the snows had kindly given United fixture congestion, or that Chelsea had, to everyone’s surprise after being 1-0 up at halftime, contrived to draw with Everton.

No the disbelief was founded on something more basic than that, who was thinking of topping the league as we whistled in desperation  at  the referee to finish the game. All we were thinking is are we going to get away with this. How often does an Arsenal crowd do that? In  the good old days the match finished with a delirious crowd oleing their heroes around the pitch, or demanding the sixth.

For the fact was until Samir Nasri scored yet another brilliant goal the most likeliest winner seemed to be Fulham. Mark Hughes claimed their 2-1 defeat a near victory, a big improvement on last season’s 4-0 drubbing.

Sorry Mark, but I am not convinced, your team looked poor to me, it was just that our defence is even worse than ever. At 1-0 up Fulham shouldn’t have even got a sniff at the game. In the first 20 minutes Fulham should have sunk without trace.

Sublime to ridiculous and back to the sublime

For 14 minutes Arsenal were sublime, it was the Harlem Globetrotters, it was fantasy football. Some of the more sheepish Fulham fans had booed Arshavin for his role in the Russian World Cup bid, but his play was so breathtaking that they stopped doing it. It is difficult to boo when your jaw is dropping. It was hardly surprising that it was his assist that saw Nasri score another sublime goal. You know the kind that they say can only be scored in the CL not the magnificent Premiership.

Then the ridiculous

Some fans say that Arsenal can’t hold a lead for 15 minutes, they are wrong! The team held out for 16 minutes, until the chuckle brothers combined to knock each other out. The referee failed to notice anything different about Koscielny’s play, and why should he, as the CB staggered towards goal, looking like Buster Keaton after a house had fallen on him. You could say it was freak goal, that Fulham got lucky. You could also say why doesn’t this team talk to each other and shout who is going for the ball. However that’s all water under the bridge it was 1-1.

 The past weighs like a nightmare on the minds of the living

Its been a great week for Marxist quotes in the football world, what with “A Spector is haunting Ferguson”, but I digress, back to the nightmare. Immediately visions of the Spurs game began to haunt crowd and players alike, it was squeaky posterior time. And posteriors continued to squeak until the 75^th minute when Nasri scored another sublime goal. You know the kind that they say can only be scored in the CL but not the magnificent Premiership. I still can’t make up my mind which was the best of the two.

At the time of scoring Fulham had looked the most likely to go ahead, but Arsenal managed to hang on to the lead. Corner pin I yelled again and again, but Walcott can’t even do that successfully.

Once again the team looked confused, should it hang on to the lead, or go for a third? It didn’t seem to make up its mind in favour of either, but muddled through to the whistle. Yes a great game for the neutral and MOTD, but we are not neutrals, and even neutrals question if Arsenal’s lofty position is convincing.

So who is convincing?

If Chelsea’s dismal form continues they are on track for 72 points, Manchester United are on track for 78 points, and Arsenal 76. That is assuming that all things remain equal, any team could improve or get worse. I would argue that Manchester United look the most convincing, but let’s wait and see what happens on Grand Slam Monday the 13^th. It’s a chance for either Manchester United or Arsenal to strike a psychological blow for their title race.

It probably won’t be the title decider, it certainly will not settle things this early, but it might inform us who is the most convincing contender. Wenger is depending on his team outscoring the opposition, and it worked at Villa, but can Arsenal get four at Manchester? Would four be enough?