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Let’s Not Be The Next Arsenal Please!

If I’m honest I haven’t enjoyed this Bank Holiday weekend much. It’s always a pleasure to see Spurs and Arsenal lose and seeing both of them get absolutely mauled on the same day would make a weekend usually but whilst them being on the receiving end of such embarrassing scorelines will always be a good thing, both Manchester clubs dishing out the spankings takes the shine off it somewhat.

Of course, there’ll be plenty of Chelsea supporters out there convinced this weekend’s knuckle shuffling up North is all a bit premature and that whilst they’ll have plenty of material to fill their tissues after yesterday’s displays, a leisurely start with a measured build-up would ultimately be more gratifying than last season’s anti-climax after giving in to the hand police too soon.

Enough of the Ken Bates analogies though, the point is whilst the whole of Manchester were on one-armed workout duties yesterday, our 3-1 win over Norwich didn’t exactly excite me and as much as I believe we’ll improve, I’m just not convinced we’ll improve enough. What’s even worse though is that I’m just not sure how seriously we’re taking it.

Take John Terry for example, ahead of this weekend the Chelsea captain was insisting “I don’t think the difference between United and us has changed this summer.  They clearly have bought players to build for the future. I like Phil Jones a lot. Chris Smalling looks really good too. Ashley Young, of course.  When you look at their team it’s set up for the future. But, in the short term, I don’t see much difference in their team this season compared to last season. Apart from Young, their regular players will be the same.  I think they might be affected by the fact they lost a few experienced players. Last year, the same happened to us and that made a difference.  Players like Michael Ballack brought a lot to the team. We missed that.”

Seriously, did United look like they were missing anyone yesterday? I mean, they were because they have players like Ferdinand, Vidic, Fletcher, Valencia and Rafael da Silva out, but did they actually look like they were missing any of them? Of course, they weren’t playing the same Arsenal side we’re used to seeing but the fact remains, 8-2 is a ridiculous scoreline at this level and not one we’re likely to see repeated.

Then we have Frank Lampard, who’s been saying ”It is still early in the season.  I have seen a lot of games and, if you look at Man City, they have looked very good but went to Bolton and conceded two. Teams at this early stage of the season are quite hard to read.  It might be quite nice for people not to talk about us and the fact other teams have spent more than us. We can concentrate on ourselves. Sometimes it is quite nice when everyone is not expecting Chelsea to run away with it like in previous years. It leaves it up to us to prove people wrong.”

I agree with Lampard that it’s very early in the season, I also agree City look a lot less convincing in defence than they do going forward but the way him and JT are talking is exactly the way we were playing on Saturday – not arsed.

Whether we like it or not (and obviously we don’t), right now it’s all about Manchester – and deservedly so the way they’ve both started the season – with Chelsea barely an afterthought. And whilst there might be more than the usual hint of bravado about our players’ opinions in the press, while they’re on the pitch, it’s time for them to start looking lively – or we could be the next Arsenal.

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