Tag: west ham

When you freely dish it out

Amy OLeave a comment

It’s been quite a long time since we attended the West Ham match, so let’s dive in.

It was a sunny, nice day to be at the Emirates. Given the previously-referenced Fuller pub crawl, neither my husband nor I were up for a beer upon arriving. We did not arrive especially early and went right to our seats. Our seats were in the Clock End again, pretty typical for a successful ballot.

This time we were as close as we’d ever been to the Away section, unsurprisingly, West Ham this week. And as we know, our job is to drown them out. In this case, they had a lot to chant about having lost Declan Rice to us a few years ago. They are still bitter about it. We acquired him for £100 million, a sum that should have set them up for buying some good players. That hasn’t really happened for them. And, as of today, they are 16th in a league of 20 teams.

Should have been an easy match.

Last season, Rice was so good, £100 million seemed like a complete steal. This season, he’s struggled more. The whole team has struggled more, in large part because it’s been impossible to field our best team, of which Rice is normally an important inclusion. There have been so many injuries in the team this season, I would have told you he is one of few that has not had any. Upon review of that contention, I am reminded that he broke a toe in November and was briefly out of the lineup.

Because of the injuries, our manager Mikel Arteta has had to try out a bunch of stuff, including, in the match prior to this one, against Leicester City, starting Raheem Sterling. Raheem Sterling was formerly one of the top players in the Premier League. He started at Liverpool and was sold to Manchester City. After a lot of early success he found himself on the bench. That’s not a sin at Manchester City. The guys on the bench are better than the starters at most other clubs. Then he was sold to Chelsea, right about the time Chelsea started buying everyone. Chelsea bought some good players but couldn’t field a team that was capable of succeeding for quite some time. When they finally sorted out their best 11, Raheem Sterling again did not make the cut. He was loaned to Arsenal at the beginning of the season.

At the beginning of the season, that seemed like good business from Arsenal. Bukayo Saka is never injured, so having Raheem Sterling available in the off-chance Saka was injured seemed good enough. Over the period Sterling’s been at Arsenal, he’s pretty much only come off the bench to rest others. It’s been clear that he is no longer capable of what he once was.

Well, guess what? Bukayo Saka was injured. He tore his hamstring in December, bad enough to require surgery. That was followed by injuries to Gabriel Jesus (ACL tear and surgery) in January, Gabriel Martinelli (hamstring strain) in February, and Kai Havertz (torn hamstring and surgery) in February. Pretty much our entire preferred starting line-up up top and parts of our next most-preferred lineup.

So in the match prior to West Ham, against Leicester City, Mikel Arteta apparently saw no choice. Raheem Sterling was in the starting lineup. He huffed and puffed around but was not capable of making a difference. Things looked dismal. The match was still scoreless almost 70 minutes in. Then Sterling was replaced with Mikel Merino, a midfielder. Merino is not even a first choice midfielder for Arsenal and had never, until that point, played as a striker. But within 10 minutes of entering the match, he scored a headed goal. Near the end of the match, he scored another. A one-time thwack from a beautiful pass by Leandro Trossard.

So the question going into the West Ham match was what does Arteta do now? Put Sterling in at the start again and let him wear down the opposition, then bring Merino in to make things happen at the end? Or start Merino?

Arteta chose to start Merino.

On game day, The Emirates was subdued. It’s been a long time since we’ve experienced an atmosphere that bad. The main thing we could all get behind was this: Declan Rice takes the corners on the left side. This happens to be the side the visitors are on in the first half. So while the West Ham supporters were lustily booing Rice, the Arsenal supporters were just as lustily standing and cheering for him. The West Ham fans had some choice songs for Rice (which also managed to insult Arsenal overall) and a few for Arteta as well.

West Ham were playing with 5 defenders, which is known to be a good strategy against Arsenal. Idea being to make it hard to have a sight of the goal and then counterattack on any mistake. We dominated but, as Arsene Wenger used to say, it was sterile domination. At near the end of the first half, West Ham’s strategy paid off big time. They got a breakaway and managed to cross into the box, where it was headed beyond our keeper, David Raya. 0 – 1.

The West Ham fans were jubilant and, if we Arsenal fans had been subdued before, we were downright morose during the second half. The rabble rousers in the crowd were unable to mount a response to West Ham’s joy.

With still 20 minutes to play in the match, teenage sensation and Arsenal defender Myles Lewis-Skelly got a yellow card that, after interminable video review, was upgraded to a red card. Still, Arsenal has shown themselves to be pretty resilient after going down to 10 men and I think we still felt some hope.

All hope was lost a short time later. Arteta removed Mikel Merino and replaced him with Raheem Sterling.

That was when Arsenal fans left the stadium in droves.

But my husband and I stayed until the bitter end. And it was bitter. There is nothing worse than being in a stadium with happy opposition, especially so close to us. Hearing them chant in joy for themselves, and in derision for us.

But, if you can freely dish it out (we can and we have) sometimes you have to be able to take it.

We took it.

I’m the luckiest girl in the world

Amy OLeave a comment

We went back to our neighborhood before the match and had dinner at Bodeans, an establishment we walked by several times in our jaunts around the neighborhood. I had the Famous Burnt Ends (you could choose wet or dry; I had wet, which means with sauce) and my husband had the pulled pork sandwich. The Burnt Ends were marvelous. For dessert I had homemade honeycomb ice cream and my husband had apple crumble. I can’t speak for the apple crumble, but the honeycomb ice cream was amazing. The honeycomb in the ice cream was crispy and gave off just a hint of honey. Delicious.

It was time to head to the match. And all I could think, all the way there, was this: “I am the luckiest girl in the world.” Yeah, it hasn’t been the greatest season (you could say it’s been lousy) and I haven’t been able to attend as many matches this year as last year, but every time I get on the Piccadilly line to go to the Emirates, I have a feeling of complete excitement. It builds and builds as we go from the Arsenal stop along Gillespie Avenue, up Drayton Park, up the stairs, and across the Ken Friar Bridge. We feel it through the turnstile and as we approach our seats, watching the warmup. Anything can happen that day, and everyone there knows it. I’ve been able to know it multiple times this year again.

20170405_191603There was supposed to be a big protest in advance of the West Ham match by the Wenger Out crowd. They were planning to stay out of the stadium for the first 13 minutes of the match, one minute for each year we haven’t had a Premier League trophy. I have no idea if they did it or not. The stadium was packed as of kickoff, and there was no notable change at 13 minutes. The crowd was in fine voice throughout. On my right, in the seats that contain new people each time, was an American who required much explanation of what was happening in the match, which his also-American associate delivered with reasonable accuracy and far less impatience than I could have mustered.

West Ham has also had a rough patch of late so the match could easily had been quite the Bumble Bowl. With the exception of a few shaky moments early in the match, Arsenal dominated this one. Our goalkeeper this day was Emi Martinez, our backup goalkeeper’s backup. (Arseblog had noted before the match that at least he is goalkeeper sized.) He had a fine match and made a few key saves. Laurent Koscielny was not back in the lineup after his injury before halftime during Sunday’s match, but Gabriel had a decent match in his place. Andy Carroll, the meaty-headed West Ham forward who has had much joy against us in the past couldn’t do much of anything against our guys.

20170405_192803(0)The refereeing in this match was far worse than in the Man City match (itself pretty poor). It boggles the mind that Martin Atkinson continues to get Arsenal matches. Three obvious penalty calls waved away. Meanwhile, he didn’t see much contact from Arsenal on West Ham players that he failed to judge a foul.

Overall, Arsenal’s passing was better, and by the time the second half was underway we were looking more and more dangerous. The Arsenal fans had started an epic rendition of the previously-mysterious “Red Army” chant that carried us though our first goal via a shot from Mesut Ozil where it seemed Alexis Sanchez proved enough distraction for the keeper to let a relatively tame shot in. Even the American next to me, who recently had seemed more interested in his phone, celebrated. The fans began chanting the famous One Nil to the Arsenal that was established many years ago when Arsenal was famous for grinding out 1-0 victories.

The next goal was a quintessentially Arsenal goal that included fabulous movement, an Alexis Sanchez back flick to Ozil, and a killer pass to Theo who slotted it home. And the third came in the form of a nice dribble and pass from Alex-Oxlade Chamberlain to Olivier Giroud, who made a curling, long-range shot.

The fans made some quick alterations to the One Nil to the Arsenal chant: “Three Nil to the Arsenal,” we sang with one voice.

The final whistle blew and my husband and I ran down the stairs, out of the Emirates, over the Ken Friar Bridge, down Drayton Park and  Gillespie Avenue, and through the Arsenal tube station, the entrance to which had been constrained to funnel the crowds toward the trains arriving to whisk us away.

20170405_165842A West Ham fan had managed to make his way onto the train with us and he said loudly that Arsenal was no longer Arsenal, we used to be a good team but no more. He protested that he was not just being an asshole, just stating facts. He acknowledged that he might be making people mad.

I didn’t feel mad (although I internally disagreed with his assessment that he was not an asshole.) What I felt was that Arsenal is my team, bad and good. Arsene Wenger is my manager, bad and good. I couldn’t change those things if I wanted to.

But I don’t want to.