The North Bank – “It’s got va-va-voom” (An Arsenal blog)

So, here we are, the final day of the season and, despite our supposedly easy run-in, we find ourselves needing a result against Fulham today in order to secure third place. Frustrating, yes. Unbelievable, yes. Infuriating, yes. Depressing, most certainly yes. But, that’s where we find ourselves and the players now have to roll their sleeves up, put in a shift and secure the points needed to prevent ourselves being pipped to third by Spuds.

I know I said yesterday that I wouldn’t be doing a post today, so think of this as an end of season bonus post to make up for the lack of posting throughout the season. It’s going to be a short one, I think.

Being in Japan, I don’t see all of the newspaper articles that you may see back in Ireland and the U.K., but the rumour is that Gallas could be on his way to Roma with Big Sol, as expected, being offered another year at the club. I have to say that another year for Sol is totally deserved given his form since re-signing in January. It’d be good to have him around the team for another season and hopefully he can give some good advice to the other defenders in training. Who knows, he could end up being our defensive coach once his playing days are done. Though, given Wenger’s phobia of all things defensive, that may not happen. We can but hope.

Does anyone else find the music played for the ‘Weird and Wonderful’ item on ATVO extremely childish and very shit?

In an ATVO interview Walcott hit the nail on the head when saying that the big teams have brushed us aside when playing us this season and we really do need to inject some steel and also a killer instinct into the team, going into next season. We have to learn to kill teams off when we have the chance. Remember the days when The Invincibles used to be three or four goals up before half time, sometimes even before 30min? We need that kind of killer instinct again. We need teams to fear us again. Teams facing us now know they don’t need to fear us because we have a lot of obvious weaknesses which they can exploit. Overall, the team is shorter than it used to be, so it is easier for teams to out-muscle us. We need a big more fight. We need to stand up for ourselves when teams try to bully or out-muscle us.

I have found myself using a line made famous by Droopy on countless occasions this season when watching Arsenal, that is: ‘You know what? That makes me mad.’ This has generally happened when watching Lukarse in goal. Of course, that is a watered down version of what I’m thinking at the time but, after the fact, that is what it translates to. We need to get some of the old Arsenal back.

I don’t want to sound too negative as there are also a lot of positives to take from the season. We can look at the huge improvement of Song, the immediate impact of Vermaelen, the fantastic performances of Van Persie and Cesc and even, dare I say it, the Eboue Redemption. Nasri has shown signs of improvement, though he is still not consistent enough just yet. Of course, I shouldn’t leave out Big Sol in terms of success stories this season as he has been outstanding for us since January. There was also the emergence of Ramsey to challenge for a first team spot until Chewbacca almost tore his leg off. So, we can take a lot of heart from these things going forward into next season. Let’s hope that Theo can make the same magnitude of improvement next season as Song did this year.

If we do secure third place this season, then you would have to view it as being an improvement. Yes, there are still many areas of the team that needs strengthening, but it would be an improvement nonetheless.

Three points today, that’s what we want. Come on Arsenal, finish the season on a positive note.

Right, that’s enough for today as it has already been a much longer post than I had planned. Take it easy.