ARSENAL fans have seen so many D-Days they must feel like extras in a remake of the Normandy Landings.
Yet today’s North London derby could well turn out to be the biggest of all. That’s how vital I see this showdown at the Emirates.
I don’t need to put my cards on the table. Everyone knows where my loyalties and heart lie. That’s never wavered and I’m desperate to see them beat Tottenham. But I’m also a realist. And as much as it may pain me to say it, that means accepting Spurs are a team in the ascendancy and my old one is staring down the barrel.
That’s why it is so important they get something out of the game. Ideally, a win but at the bare minimum, a performance. The outlook is bleak at Arsenal. You have players wanting to go, while some have come through and already disappeared, like Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. There’s an owner who wants to take 100 per cent control so he doesn’t even have to do an AGM, let alone fail to speak to fans when they hold one. And then there’s the manager, who only ever seems to be one game away from total chaos. At times it seems the players simply aren’t responding to him.
It’s all fine the players coming out thinking they’ve made a statement by beating the likes of Brighton or Swansea. It’s in the genuinely big games where they have to deliver.
If they can do that, if they can get a result, it finally gives the fans something to look forward to and, who knows, could be a spark that leads to some momentum at long, long last. It genuinely hurts those supporters to see Spurs rattling in goals, flying high in the league and beating the best in Europe — all without even having their own home ground this season.
Had someone said 18 months ago that Tottenham would be turning over Real Madrid at Wembley in the Champions League, you’d have asked what they had been drinking.
But that’s the size of it right now. They’re cock-a-hoop and rightly so, because we would be the same if the boot was on the other foot. Just one word of warning for Spurs, though. This is when they have to capitalise on the manager, the team, the results and the imminent new stadium. They can either kick on or become the same old Spurs people have labelled them in the past.
But that’s for the future. Right now, the feeling at the two clubs is like chalk and cheese.
It’s time for Arsenal to stand up and show they genuinely know just what it means to play for this great club.
At least there’s a ray of hope in that Mauricio Pochettino has never managed to win at the Emirates.
Fingers crossed that record continues beyond this weekend at least.
From The Sun
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