Coming up this Sunday is the biggest game for Arsenal Football Club in nearly six years. Since Patrick Vieira, with his last kick of a football in an Arsenal shirt, fired in that deciding penalty against Manchester United in May 2005, forget the Barcelona game from last week, forget the Champions League final in 2006, that’s all in the past, it doesn’t matter, what does matter is that Arsenal go out and win the so called ‘Mickey Mouse Cup’ this Sunday.
It’s a trophy that will mean so much to every Arsenal player in that team who have been criticised over the past five years for lacking the drive to win, so much to Arsene Wenger who has been criticised, even by Arsenal fans, for his transfer policy, the belief that you don’t have to spend big to win trophies, it will be a success for the way the game should be played and the way a club should be managed.
The League Cup is no doubt considered the least desirable out of the domestic trinity, the cup is often referred to as a joke by supporters, a cup that the big clubs don’t take seriously, a cup that in the past six years has been won by Manchester United, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur. Looking at the recent winners, I feel that any negative comment about the prestige of the cup is pretty invalid. It seems that with the increase in pressure for silverware, the League Cup is getting some meaning back, it’s a cup that can help you to kick on in the final months of the season; it will give the Arsenal team the belief that they can win trophies.
It seems simple enough, Arsenal are going up against a Birmingham side that are flirting with the drop zone in the Premier League, a side that they brushed aside at St Andrews by three goals to nil earlier in the season, when you consider their past record against Birmingham at St Andrews, that was a very good result, but you just can never be sure with Arsenal. The problems are starting to mount up already, Theo Walcott is out, the player that gives Arsenal something different, left backs all over the world fear him, yes he may be clumsy at times but I know from playing football, when a player is quicker than you, if you make one mistake and he gets past you, there’s nothing you can do except give him a kick. Fabregas has been confirmed out with a hamstring problem, I don’t need to give a reason for this one, no Fabregas is a massive blow for Arsenal. This leaves it likely that Nasri will drop into the middle and Van Persie will be supported on the wings by Arshavin, and then there’s a possibility of Chamakh, Bendtner, Rosicky or maybe even Eboue playing on the other side, all players that you just don’t know what you’re going to get when they’re lining up before a match.
If they turn up and play the way everyone knows they can, it may very well get embarrassing for Birmingham, I don’t see this being the case though. Whichever way you look at this, a loss on Sunday could absolutely destroy Arsenal’s confidence going into the final stages of the season. No disrespect to Birmingham but Arsenal should win, if they were to lose against United or Chelsea I doubt it would affect them too badly, but to lose to a team that are hovering above the relegation zone would be a massive blow to their ambitions to win anything at all this season.
If you speak to the majority of football fans, they’d say Arsenal were favourites, but I can guarantee they wouldn’t put a lot of money on Arsenal winning, over the years Arsenal have built up a reputation of choking when it comes to crunch time, it’s evident in Arsenal’s recent history against the big teams, United and Chelsea have dominated Arsenal for the past few seasons, and all too often Arsenal fall away from the leading pack with about a month of the season left to go.
So all in all, this Sunday is a chance, a very good chance for Arsenal to build some momentum, to rid themselves of the demons that hang over their heads, to finally win a trophy, a feat that has eluded them for over half a decade, a stat that would have been unthinkable around the time of ‘The Invincibles.’ If Arsenal win on Sunday, it could very well help them go onto achieve multiple honours this season, but if they fail, like they have done all too often in the past, the possibility of reading the sentence, ‘Six years without a trophy,’ in May just doesn’t bare thinking about.
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