Neal and Jeremy discussing the season.
Jeremy and I were chatting on AIM as Manchester City wrapped up their second win over Stoke City in three days yesterday. As Citeh eclipsed Arsenal in the standings he asked me how I felt about it as an Arsenal fan. This is a question I've been thinking about quite a bit recently, especially since my recent vacation took me
to Eastlands for a match between Citeh and Spurs. As it turns out, the answer is a complex one. It is complex mostly because my relationships with football, the Premier League, and Arsenal are fairly complex ones.
As An Arsenal Supporter
The obvious answer would be that I want Arsenal to finish third and avoid the possibility of a Champions League play-in scenario. The reality is that, like a potential Carling Cup win earlier in the year, I think that finishing second or third would have allowed the Arsenal leadership to paper over the cracks and continue to turn a blind eye to a squad that has some serious flaws. Is it a certainty that a fourth place finish will change this thinking? No, but the ignominious end to the season combined with a new, single driving force behind the ownership structure will dramatically increase
[ed note: do you mean decrease?] the chances of this off-season being another "minor modification" to the squad.
As A Fantasy Player
My immediate reaction was that I was disappointed that any new Arsenal acquisition would likely be less valuable at the beginning of next season as they missed one or more match weeks for Champions League qualification. The quick follow-up reaction was that I'd MUCH rather Citeh's new bazillionaire players avoid the same early-season fate. In the Yahoo game identifying inexpensive Premier League newbies (e.g., Adam, Brunt, Odemwingie, Holden, Kolarov, VDV) at the beginning of the season helps you afford the established veterans who you know will produce (e.g., Drogba, Rooney, RvP, Bale, EvdS). It usually isn't a mystery as to who the high-potential players are going to be early - United's new keeper, Citeh's new stars, Liverpool's new CB and/or winger, Spurs new striker, Eden Hazzard, Adel Taarabt, etc. - but it becomes harder to buy these players early at what you assume will be their lowest price of the season when you know they'll be missing matches early for Champions League qualification.
As A Writer
As sad as I am to say it, Arsenal are incredibly polarizing as long as Wenger sticks to his way of doing things. While this may be frustrating to the part of me that supports the club, it means that writing about Arsenal tends to draw more opinions, create more conversation, and generally increase the extent to which people read and participate. As you might imagine, this is good for someone who measures writing success - at least to some extent - by the popularity of the posts and the level of intelligent debate that they create in the comments section or on
the Facebook site.
So, at the end of the day, each of the factors above was telling me that Citeh beating Stoke and presumably going on to beat out Arsenal for third place and a guaranteed spot in the group stages of the Champions League next season is a good thing for the long term health of the club, my fantasy team, and the popularity of the blog.
Either that or I just spent 700 or so words convincing myself to avoid crawling into a corner and sobbing uncontrollably over the depressing state of affairs at the Emirates. I'm not sure which, but I'm going to go with the logical stuff rather that the depressing stuff... for now.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled fantasy analysis column back from ironic hiatus much closer to the actual matches being played.
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