Possibly not anticipating a result against City yesterday and maybe expecting his side to fall more than just the 5 points behind us after our win against Wolves, Arsenal’s Gael Clichy had a pre-match bitch to excuse what could’ve come.
Obviously they’d already lost to us and despite having an extra man and their 9th penalty so far this season, despite the 3-0 scoreline, Arsenal struggled for long periods against City but as Clichy pointed out before the game, we’d be struggling if we had injuries to deal with as well.
The Frenchman whinges “(Winning a trophy) has become an obsession. When you play for a club like Arsenal, you don’t lack the mentality. You are a winner. To be at the top level, whether it’s NBA, NFL or whatever, you are a winner. If we play for Arsenal instead of another club in another country with smaller teams, it’s because we have the winning mentality. After, it is other things that make the difference. You don’t want to hide behind this but come on – at Chelsea, we missed van Persie, Fabregas, Walcott, who was on fire, and Vermaelen. Take off Drogba, Lampard, Malouda and Terry from Chelsea and it’s a different story. The fact is we’ve been without some massive players and it’s quite difficult to cope. Football is sometimes not just as simple as ‘you are the best team so you are going to win’.”
Funny thing is, I was under the impression Frank Lampard hadn’t played for us since August but then he’s obviously not a key player. And I suppose the fact that we’ve recently had Drogba, Lampard, Benayoun, Kalou, Alex and Sturridge missing in the Premier League and Champions League, have Jose Bosingwa just back after a year out and were forced into playing an unfit John Terry, must make us as lucky as the Arsenal defender says.
Personally, I think we’d probably consider ourselves fairly lucky if we were the ones racking up 9 penalties and getting to play against ten men on 4 occasions so far but we just have to make do with not having any key players out apparently!
Blue is the colour
