Morning! Hope you all haven’t missed me too much.
Just over a week ago I returned from 10-days in Egypt and bought something back with my that has seen over a stone in weight loss in that time. Some will say that is not a bad thing for me! The stomach bug hit me for 6 and completely drained my energy.
Today is the first morning I have woken up and not had a bowel movement that resembles the Niagra Falls. Sorry to all those tucking into a Friday morning bacon roll!
Sadly the illness led me to miss the Sheffield United victory (and could not even get out of bed to watch it on TV) and I have also sold my Brentford ticket. Hopefully this is now the recovery and not a false dawn!
This blog was never supposed to be a daily one. I only ever really wrote when I fancied it. But in the last year and a half, it had become something I was doing each and every day. The last 3 couple of days with no blog broke a daily writing streak of more than 500 days!
That Sheffield United victory seems a lifetime ago right now.
I remember writing to some mockery back end of last year that Mikel Arteta was ‘negative splitting’ his season. That we were holding back in the first half of the season deliberately to ensure that we had more energy for the final kick.
This is something you see distance runners and swimmers do. They will try and complete the second half of the race quicker than the first half, taking advantage of others who might have put too much energy into the first half of the race.
It is something Manchester City under Pep Guardiola have always done so well. Done just enough to get through games in the first half of the season before being unbeatable in the second.
Last season was the perfect example of how a team that has a better 2nd half of the season will usually finish ahead of a team who start fast and has a good first half.
Now some will argue that “we have left too much to do” and started out drive to the finish line too late. I really do not think being 2 points off top after 27 games is leaving ourselves with too much to do.
Yes, these fans will point to Fulham (both games), West Ham and other fixtures, but football is not perfect. If you say “Arsenal should have won those games” then you also have to concede that Liverpool and Manchester City “should” have won games they did not. The issue with fans at times is that they expect their own team to be perfect all the time, but do not hold the same bar of expectation to others.
On to Brentford tomorrow. A late kick off and a game I was really looking forward too. Instead I will be watching it from the comfort of my sofa, hopefully having kept down the last 48 hours food!
Have a good Friday.
Keenos
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 