If the fat lady had not sung yet, and she still hasn’t, her corset strings are certainly being tugged pretty damn hard. The match against Arsenal was an absolute classic, both for the supporters of the two clubs and for the neutrals. But it will do no good whatsoever for our title challenge. We needed to win that match, and we certainly needed to not concede four goals AGAIN. We showed so much character, belief, and ability in this match. But so did Arsenal, and that’s exactly why we couldn’t quite get the three points. Arshavin’s finishes were top class. But he should NEVER have been in those positions to score them in the first place. Let by-gones be by-gones, though… no need to dwell any longer on this one match. With United playing better recently, we kind of just have to accept that finishing second is the most likely scenario.
The worrying aspect about all of this is that Man U now has a game in hand and are three points up. Winning their match in hand would be catastrophic when you only have 5 matches left! Keep in mind, also, that we are talking about Manchester “F-ing Lucky” United (not that we aren’t lucky… but we do it by playing well, not by TRULY just getting lucky) and we all know that they’ll win each of these remaining matches by one goal despite playing like rubbish.
I would like to point out, though, that we have now score d four or more goals against Chelsea, Man U, Real Madrid, Arsenal AND Aston Villa this season… and within the past 6 weeks. So is this really a problem that we dropped a couple of points against Arsenal? It may be frustrating to see our defense making such silly mistakes, but we have improved so, SO much against top opposition this season in the Premiership. Our points tally will reflect that at the end of the season. The disappointment is knowing how close we were to winning it, but I have to say HONESTLY that I did not expect the title this season. Not a chance. The signings of Riera and Keane seemed to be “good, but not good enough” to really push on. So to be first for a decent chunk of the season was a real treat. It screams of heartache rather than headache, unlike the past few seasons where we didn’t have a prayer of winning the title. And by past few seasons, I mean any season other than 2001-2002… and even then it didn’t look as likely as it did this year to have a chance.
I think Liverpool are really on the up, and I don’t see why we couldn’t take performances like this to heart and realize we can scrape our way back into any match regardless of how we are playing. The “we’ll just score more than you score” philosophy of poor defensive teams like Newcastle of the 90s is not exactly our style, but we are MAKING it our style when we play poorly. I appreciate that as a supporter, because it means we have belief in our abilty to score goals. We aren’t the Premiership’s top goalscoring team for nothing! With Torres, Gerrard, Kuyt, Benayoun, etc., you can always bank on goals.
All in all, this 2008-2009 season can be considered a massive success despite being the third straight without any major silverware. We have looked far more classy than in the past, much more attack-minded, more determined, filled with so much more belief, and also have finally found some balance. There will be critics, and I was one during January when we were so awful, but over the season we have been terrific. I am extremely proud of the title challenge and though it isn’t TECHNICALLY over, I feel that we’ll fall just short. Do I believe we’ll win the rest of our matches? Absolutely! Unfortunately, I also believe United will scrape by and pip us at the end. They do have those extra points, after all.
