Arsenal are a joke

Twitter is simultaneously a wonderful place to engage, discuss and debate football with my fellow Gooners, and fans of other clubs, and a plague. The horrible gnawing sensation I get at the back of my head when I read some of the stuff that is sent to me leaves with me a heady, sick feeling in my stomach when I try not to react to some of the stuff I see.

I have a very imbalanced timeline, I accept that. I mostly follow people who have a similar attitude towards the team as I do, but I also follow those are have the opposite opinion to me on most things and those with militant positivity/negativity – neither are stances I subscribe to.

The people I follow who are completely different from me all generally share the same trait – the ability to express their opinions in an intelligent and/or respectful way. As such you would expect that my timeline would be free of dolts and if you are true to Twitter’s definition of “timeline” you would be right. I do not follow any dolts.

Sadly, however, I do have an extremely busy mentions page/timeline/call-it-what-you-will and this is the place I have idiocy thrust under my nose on an unrelenting basis. What makes it quite infuriating is most of the people who send me their illogical, and often ridiculously ill-informed, opinions don’t follow me either – I can only assume what I tweet or discuss with others is picked up via a shared connection, and they feel compelled to force their bilge onto me.

Sometimes I bite, mostly I just ignore and other times I take to Twitter to have a little rant about it to soothe the gnawing feeling in my head. On occasions, like today, I take to my blog to share a few views. There are many opinions that have been thrust my way recently, mostly relating to the quality of our team, lack of signings and pessimisms about our ability to compete, but the one that has caused this blog is the view that Arsenal are a joke for not buying anyone in January.

When you ask the few that seem able to offer a comprehensible reply why Arsenal are a joke the answer tends to be something along the lines of “[expletives] Wenger didn’t buy anyone, finish fourth again, no f***ing ambition”. Intelligent, succinct and compelling. I have sent off for my welcome pack.

It did get me thinking though and do you know what? I agree – Arsenal are a joke and I am laughing my head off at how funny we are. Let me tell you my thinking.

At the end of last season, after watching the disloyal badger lift the Premier League trophy with United and seeing Arsenal scrape fourth again, expectations were at an all-time low. We had sold off pretty much every single top-class talent we had and in the view of many, replaced them with less talented players.

Our wage bill was at an all-time high yet our stock hadn’t been so low. It also seemed that little to no effort was being made to improve the team aside from the underwhelming signings of a crocked youth player and an ex-player on a free whilst all of our rivals plunged millions of pounds into improving their squads.

Then we lost to Aston Villa on the opening day and it was clear to everyone that Arsenal would have a job getting into the top six. Things looked up a bit when we signed Mesut Özil for a club-record fee but signing a player in a position we were already stacked whilst ignore the deficiencies of the rest of the team was hardly going to change our fortunes right?

We started to pick up points, but we didn’t get our hopes up because everyone knew how fragile our squad was. Then we drew to West Brom and we all knew the good form was just a flash in the pan – these were our true colours.

Arsenal bounced back but then a defeat to the worst Manchester United team in 25 years showed how we had just been lucky with fixtures, facing weak teams and we had failed our first real test – Spurs, Napoli, Liverpool and Dortmund weren’t “real” real tests, they were just test tests, not real ones.

We picked up a bit of form but then came Everton, Napoli, City and Chelsea and we couldn’t win one game. Our first real tests of the season and we cocked it up. A very open match against City with poor officiating didn’t mask the fact our attack was shit and could only score three goals against the most expensive team in the league and our shitty defence was back to leaking goals. And Chelsea didn’t park the bus and played for a draw – oh no, Arsenal were just too s**t to break them down.

But then Arsenal were back to winning games and keeping their noses ahead at the top of the league. It surely wasn’t going to last and we were right. A draw to Southampton, something you would never see the amazing City do (oh right…), and we had given up our spot at the top of the league. We had thrown in the towel. It was over.

City had been blasting past teams all season with an incredible attack and unbreachable defence and Arsenal have just been doing enough to scrape by right? Arsenal winning 10 games by 2 goals to nil is just a lucky coincidence and does not demonstrate an incredibly professional outfit that has a wonderful balance between attack and defence.

Arsenal could have capitalised on their good fortune by signing a world-class striker who is going to get the sort of goals that Aguero and Suarez get but instead we allowed all of those players to move to other clubs because we were too tight.

Diego Costa of Atletico Madrid was available right? He has been showing what a consistent goal-getter he is for at least 6 months now. Remember when Baptista did the same? That was proof he would score 30 goals a season in an unfamiliar league right? I mean Soldado has just been banging them in. Costa was definitely worth £40m and he would have jumped at the chance to place for Arsenal, especially as Atletico are having such a tough time. They would have parted with him in a heartbeat, it’s not like they are trying to win the title or anything.

Moneybags Monaco lost Falcao recently and they did what Arsenal were unable to do and find world-class talent in January, dispelling the myth, by signing that 50 goal a season man from Fulham, Berbatov.

So in short, Arsenal have a striker who doesn’t score like Suarez, Aguero or Berbatov. They are 21 goals behind City, 6 of which City scored in one game against Arsenal (also meaning Arsenal conceded only 15 goals in 23 other matches) and despite losing to City and drawing with Chelsea, Arsenal could start tomorrow anything from 1 point behind City or up to 2 points ahead and this is after 24 games not 4.

So considering all of that and adding in the weak squad have got to this point, the lack of goals and no new striker signing, low expectations, worst squad in 20 years, misfiring striker, lack of spending and pointless sharing of goals around the team, yes – Arsenal are a joke and what a funny joke they are. I’m looking forward to the punchline.