2010-11

Going into the 6^th season of not having won any silverware and the natives were becoming restless.
We had lost a couple of big players over the past few seasons, Toure, Adebayor, Henry and Vieira had all departed with no real big names coming in to replace them. The youth experiment was in full swing with 19 players going out on loan during this season.
We brought in Laurent Koscielny from Lorient for £8,000,000, Chamakh came in on a free and Squillaci was the other big(ish) signing from Sevilla. Its amazing to look at Koscielny now and the form and performances he is producing is amazing, to think we got him for only £8million, what an absolute bargain!

Squillaci turned out to be dead rubber and a waste of £3million quid, he is on my list of worst defenders I’ve ever seen.
Gallas, Sol Campbell, Silvestre and Eduardo were the high profile names to leave in the summer. 8 youths were let go on free transfer and joined other clubs with 3 being released. Was the youth experiment was beginning to fail? Beginning to show that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, these players that left showed that maybe it wasn’t going to work out how Wenger really wanted it to. A bright light from the youth set up was home-grown Jack Wilshere who had done well on his loan move and came back to us ready for football. He was in the squad and would play a part in our season.

It was a shame to see Eduardo go, I think most Arsenal fans still like him and all know what happened to him was so unlucky. He was showing how much of a good striker he could be for us before his injury and I think its safe to say he never properly recovered from that.

Onto the season then and we started away at Liverpool getting an equaliser in the last minute thanks to a Pepe Reina own goal. I was there and can safely say there is not many better feelings out there than a last minute goal that gets you a point or even three.
After 10 games we were second, had slipped up away to Sunderland only getting a point and lost twice in a row at home to WBA and away at Chelsea. I think I remember the Chelsea game, Alex scored a rocket of a free kick near the end of the game after the ever present and expected Drogba goal.
Before the end of the year was out we had lost 5 times, in writing these short reviews you notice how many times we have lost before the year has finished, in this and in past seasons, which makes a title challenge almost impossible. Adding to the losses against WBA and Chelsea, we lost points at Man Utd and at home to Spurs and Newcastle, again losing to teams you would hope to be beating to be considered in with a chance of finishing top.
By the end of February though we were in touching distance of United thanks to some good results over the Xmas period, including a win at home to Chelsea 3-1. We were also letting valuable points slip away from home, 4-0 up at Newcastle at half time and we completely imploded. This was another game I was at and think it’s the biggest ever comeback in the Premier League. To be away from home and 4-0 up at half time your expecting to win. We all went for a beer downstairs and was celebrating 3 points! However, some bad refereeing decisions gave them two penalties and then Diaby reacted to Joey Barton I think, and saw red. A Tiote goal 3 mins from time meant we were walking out with glum faces. All the little Geordie kids running around us waiting for us to react, it was not a fun walk away from the stadium. We went to shelter in a Pizza Hut and drowned our sorrows with a deep pan and a beer.

6 draws in 7 games saw us fade away in March and we went from 2^nd to 3^rd to 4^th in a matter of weeks. Draws against Sunderland, WBA and Blackburn coupled with Spurs and Liverpool meant we were in for a hard end of season run in. We actually lost 3 of our last 5 games, we won at home to United with an Aaron Ramsey goal which should have been a battle of the top two teams, but as we were not picking up the points against the smaller sides it was only a consolation win.

It was clear that this new young side didn’t know how to win, they didn’t know how to stay strong, grind out results and pick up points away from home. We needed to win a final to give them a taste of winning, to show them what its like and so next time they would be able to take that experience and pick up the points needed to stay in the race.

This leads me nicely onto the Carling Cup. This is the season we reached the final to play Birmingham, this is the season where we should have won the silverware needed to pick the players up and give them a strong finish to the season.
To reach the final we beat Spurs (always nice) at Spurs (even nicer) 4-1, with goals from Lansbury in normal time, and 2 pens from Nasri and an Arshavin goal in extra time to see us go through. We also got through against Newcastle, Wigan and Ipswich to see us get to Wembley for the first time since the Chelsea Semi Final in 2009.

I’m not going to discuss the game, we all know what happened.

So we faded away from the league in and around the end of February, directly after this final. Its no coincidence that this loss had a massive effect on the squad, it was a game we should have won against lower grade opposition. The loss hit me big time not because it was the Carling Cup, far from it, but because this should have been the trophy to motivate us onto more. It should have been the catalyst for the season to go to a new level, to stay in the race until the end of May and fight for that Championship. I was massively excited before the game for the chance to see that happen, I believed we would win and I would see that confidence grow within the players, they would now know how to win and would want to go and do it again.

We all know how it ended and that is a big reason you saw the dip in form in the league, 6 draws in the next 7 games saw our title fight disappear but how different it could have been if we won that trophy. I compare it to when Chelsea won the Carling Cup and then went onto win the league, I think we could have done something similar, this final was so important to our club and we couldn’t do enough to win against Birmingham City, incredibly disappointing.

The Champions League saw us finish second in the group again which meant a harder tie in the round of 16 again. Our group had Eduardo’s new team Shakhtar, Partizan and Braga, Eduardo scored against us home and away.
Our harder tie was Barcelona and for the second season in a row we had to face the best team in Europe. One of the most incredible games to be played at the Grove in its short history was a home win against Barca, Arshavin scoring in the last 10 minutes to see a famous win and we took a 2-1 lead out to Spain.
Barca struck first in the Nou Camp after that mistake from Cesc on the edge of his area, Messi was fed through, flicked it up and finished in such style to put them level on aggregate. It was a great goal. Then we won a corner early in the second half and Diaby went for it, the ball flicked off Busquets head into the net and we were back in with a chance. After that was sheer controversy, Van Persie took a shot at goal after the whistle had gone, not surprising considering the noise in the stadium, the ref took the amazing decision that he was wasting time and booked him, it was his second yellow and we were down to 10 men. After that we suffered and Xavi and Messi scored to put the game to bed. We can only wonder at what could have been had Robin stayed on the field, a little bit like the final in Paris against the same team.

The FA Cup saw us reach the quarter finals where we went out to United. The game was played in early March, right in the period where the team would have been still feeling the effect from losing the final. We couldn’t pick ourselves up and lost 2-0 at Old Trafford to end yet another season of no silverware.

6 years and We’ve Won F**k All…

Cheers for reading
Norby

Follow @mattwigley

Read past reviews here

Season 5
https://shewore.com/2014/01/27/8-years-and-weve-won-nothing-season-5/

Season 4
https://shewore.com/2014/01/22/8-years-and-weve-won-nothing-season-4/

Season 3
https://shewore.com/2014/01/21/8-years-and-weve-won-fk-all-season-3/

Season 2
https://shewore.com/2014/01/17/8-years-and-weve-won-fk-all-season-2/

Season 1
https://shewore.com/2014/01/16/8-years-and-weve-won-fk-all/

2009 – 10

A slight improvement on last season as we finished 3^rd and qualified for the Champions League without having to go through the qualifying round. We improved by 3 points on the season previous where we finished with 72., we also scored many more goals, it went up from 68 to 83. Disappointingly though we lost a total of 9 times, the season before it was only 6 times. 4 of these losses came before November and against 3 of the teams who would be fighting for the top 4 and title, United, City and Chelsea. The loss against City was when Adebayor ran the length of the field to celebrate in front of our fans, he also raked his studs down Robin Van Persie’s face during the game.

Transfer wise for the season we resigned Sol Campbell in January and Thomas Vermaelen came in from Ajax. He made an instant impression away at Everton in our first game and was the best player on the field. We won 6-1 and I was thrown out of the ground after we went 1-0 up. We had arrived in Liverpool early and been drinking all morning. I was slightly worse for wear and got picked out for singing at the Everton fans, was thrown out and went to watch the rest of the game down the road in an Everton pub. The weird thing was some Everton fans had left the game early because we were winning so easily and they recognised me as the guy who got thrown out earlier on!
They were fine though, I got talking to a scouse guy at the bar, he happened to be a Liverpool fan and enjoyed the result just as much as me I think!

We sold Adebayor and Kolo Toure to Man City for a combined £41million, the infamous Bischoff left on a free along with a couple of other youngsters leaving as well. A total of 18 youngsters went out on loan, it was the height of our “youth experiment” and we had so many kids who had been at the club for so long but were never going to be good enough. One of them was a certain Jack Wilshere who went to Bolton for the season, we also saw Szczesny go to Brentford for the season but apart from these two, there were no other players of note and in fact all but one of them have left the club.

Picking up from those losses to United and City then, we went on an unbeaten 7 game run, drawing once and after 11 games, had scored a total of 36 goals which included results 6-2 against Blackburn and the 6-1 I mentioned above against Everton. We then lost 2 in a row against Sunderland away and Chelsea at home. This put us down to 4^th and we were fighting to stay there for the rest of the season.
We didn’t lose again until the end of January when we played United at home and lost 3-1, the week after we went to Chelsea and lost 2-0. Our results against the other top teams in the league had taken a turn for the worse and suddenly we couldn’t pick up a point against the teams we were meant to be fighting with for the top positions.
We won only once in our last 5 games against Fulham, losing 3 times including against Spurs at WHL and drew once against City at home.

It wasn’t a good league season once again and once again we seemed to go backwards with results against the top clubs being the most disappointing.

Would the cups be our saving grace for silverware? Well sadly no, they wouldn’t. Stoke put us out of the FA Cup in the 4^th round when we played them at The Brittania stadium. The kids were put out against Man City in the 5^th round of the Carling Cup in Manchester after we beat WBA and Liverpool in the early rounds.

In the Champions league we again got through our group stage and finished top. Teams in our group were Olympiakos, Standard Liege and AZ Alkmaar. We were drawn against Porto in the next round and comfortably beat them 5-0 at home to make the aggregate 6-2 and saw us through. We were then drawn against Barcelona who many around Europe were talking about as being one of the best ever sides produced for the way they played football and everything they were winning. It was being billed as a clash of the two teams who played football and I remember looking forward to seeing such a good game between two sides who wanted to get the ball down and play football. How we survived the first half of the first leg I will never quite understand, they absolutely battered us but we went in at 0-0. Within seconds of the restart they went ahead and then scored again with both goals being scored by Ibrahimovic. We got one back through Theo and Cesc won a penalty after being fouled by Puyol which saw him sent off. Cesc took the penalty himself and made an injury in his leg worse by hitting the ball so hard, he actually broke his leg!

The second leg away in the Nou Camp was a bit different. We went 1-0 up through Nick Bendtner would you believe it! We then witnessed a Messi masterclass with him scoring 4 to see them comfortably through. Being out there in the Nou Camp and witness that Messi performance was something else. I was happy to go 1-0 up but ultimately you have to put your hands up and say we went out to a better side.

Season 5 and still nothing won then. Some of the highest ticket prices in Europe and we didn’t seem to be advancing or improving. We were selling players who really we should have been keeping and building on to make a better side. It was frustrating also as we didn’t know what the situation was with money. Did we have any to spend and buy new players? Did we need to sell these players to break even? We will never know the full story but I for one believe that we did not have enough money to go out and spend loads on big name top players. We were shopping at the end of the market and needed to sell to be able to buy. The Emirates had clearly put us back financially but the move from Highbury was sold to fans as putting us among the elite of Europe and giving us money to compete finally. I think fans wanted this immediately but there were always going to be tough seasons where we wouldn’t be able to spend a lot of money.  It was clear Wengers experiment with youth was not working and so we couldn’t see how it was going to improve. What would next season bring?

Cheers for reading

Norby

Follow @mattwigley