Gunners firing on all cylinders- Arsenal beat Leicester City in seven goal thriller.
Across Britain millions of women will be sighing heavily, shaking their heads in complete despair and trying to pretend that it isn't happening. Yes everybody the new Premier League football season is up and running and last night a thousand fireworks exploded into life at the Emirates Stadium, home of Arsenal football club.
It only seems like yesterday since thousands of mutinous Arsenal fans were storming the barricades, demanding the head of Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, baying for the Frenchman's blood and barely able to suppress fury and indignation. Wenger they insisted, had to go, leave by the back door and never darken the Emirates corridors ever again. In fact they were so angry and livid that there were those among the crowd who began to look back to those halcyon days of Bertie Mee and more recently, George Graham. They wouldn't have allowed Arsenal to deteriorate so rapidly as Arsenal quite clearly did towards the end of last season.
But history is a funny thing. A vast majority of those same dissatisfied Arsenal supporters who wanted Wenger out may have conveniently forgotten that during that season the Gunners remained unbeaten, the Invincibles having successfully negotiated a whole season without losing a single game. Still short though memories are, Arsenal, at the moment, are still regarded as serial underachievers. And yet last night against Leicester City the home side briefly allayed any apparent anxieties with a 4-3 victory. But there were obviously nervous jitters in their defence and the faultlines must be an enormous source of concern.
So it was that Arsenal stepped out to the technicolour fireworks of Sky TV on a Friday evening. Now the traditionalists may well tell you that this is simply beyond a joke. Fridays are reserved for fish suppers, Jewish shabbat chicken suppers, drinking gleefully in the pub after work and many decades ago Crackerjack on BBC One at 5.00. But here we were all again, beers and pizzas by the ready, voices well oiled, football's most melodious choirs chanting their soprano songs on the vast stage that is the Emirates Stadium.
None though had for a moment had any idea of what the 90 minutes would bring. Arsenal, buoyed by the FA Cup Final victory against Chelsea at the end of last season, flew off the starting blocks like a team bursting with confidence, ideas and attacking exuberance. It took them the best part of a minute to announce themselves as potential Premier League contenders and by the end of this remarkable seven goal thriller most of the neutrals were pleading for more.
Arsenal's new signing French striker Alexandra Lacazette was paraded before the adoring Gunners faithful and it almost felt as if Arsenal were holding a reception for the new Thierry Henry but the jury may be out on that one for quite a while. Henry scored some of the most sublime goals ever seen at Arsenal becoming well and truly established as a prolific goal scoring machine at Highbury before it made way for the Emirates.
It took Lacazette just a minute to declare his hand to the expectant Arsenal fans. There have been goals scored in equally as quick a time as the one we witnessed last night but none quite as unexpected. After a typically fluent, flowing attack out on Arsenal's wing, the ball travelled quickly and simply before a cross into the area found Lacazette who nipped in sharply just in front of his marker and firmly flicked his header past Kasper Schmeichel. It was a goal that had no ample warning but was still greeted with the most magnificent roar from the crowd.
This looked as if it could be the opening of the Arsenal floodgates given the speed, seriousness and intensity of Arsenal start. Once Arsenal began to reveal their festival of short passes played at breakneck pace you began to suspect that all of those doubts, reservations and misgivings that seemed to gnaw away at Arsenal last season, had been well and truly extinguished.
Once again Arsenal's ball distribution, such a pleasure to behold, unfolded itself like a colourful silk sheet, the ball zipping around the central midfield area effortlessly, red shirts gratefully receiving, giving it and going as if they'd performed the same training exercise a hundred times. Arsenal's football had an instantly identifiable shape, pattern and geometry that all of us could rightly acclaim and drool over.
In fact ever since Wenger's arrival at Arsenal over 20 years, the blueprint has always been the same, the template unvarying, the tempo just upbeat and almost musical at times. For the best part of an hour, Arsenal passed the ball round and round the pitch so precisely and rhythmically that you had to blink twice if you'd missed the sheer extravagance and ornateness of it all.
But this game had so many wild twists, turns and chicanes that at times the match almost reached legendary heights. Then Leicester equalised and a solemn silence descended across North London. The Arsenal supporters gulped, groaned and began to assume the air of deja vu. Of course they'd all been here before. Another lofted ball into the Arsenal area was narrowly headed back into the six yard box and Shinji Kazaki prodded the ball over the Arsenal line. Back to square one for Arsenal. Back to the drawing board for Arsenal.
It was time for those disgruntled Arsenal fans to vent another barrage of frustration, time to express their grief, those low grumbles of disenchantment and above all it was time for Arsene Wenger to pack his belongings together, clear his desk and just go. Don't we love football supporters? When things go well and swimmingly the manager is somehow the best manager in the world but if by some chance it doesn't the consequences can be too painful to even consider.
This season though Wenger has been given a stay of execution and the guillotine has been kept in cold storage. On the bench Wenger, although immaculately turned out, still looks haunted, gaunt, thin as a bamboo stick and like a man who is simply resigned to his fate. He leans forward with that now almost completely greying hair, hands almost permanently tucked into his pockets, nervously scrutinising every Arsenal pass, tackle and attack.
At times he almost looks as if he's had enough, tolerance tested to the limit and privately longing for the game to end. Any more of this, he must be thinking and he'll have to go the Parisian artists quarter or some remote arrondissement where nobody can find him. Perhaps a cafe au lait with a croissant or two before leafing through Proust.
Minutes later Leicester were in front. Once again Leicester came surging forward and after a teasing ball into the Arsenal area, the ball was driven in low across the Arsenal box with some conviction and Jamie Vardy, the man who just couldn't stop scoring for Leicester in their Premier League title winning season two years ago, now did what seems to come naturally. He slammed the ball into the net from close range heartlessly and almost callously.
Shortly before half time, with Arsenal supporters now in revolt and utterly outraged, Arsenal once again demonstrated a most combative fighting spirit. A neat and attractive exchange of whirlwind one twos and passes outside the Leicester area, reminded you of the proverbial pinball machine, the ball clipped and chipped between a blur of Arsenal feet like the prettiest footballing exhibition. It was football of the finest stock, of the most mature vintage, football with a gold leaf and hallmark. It was superbly constructed, wonderfully executed and, you felt belonged, in a Brazilian or German field. Welbeck finally tapped the ball to Lacazette and the Frenchman just rolled the ball in for Arsenal's equaliser.
The second half re- started in much the way the first half had begun. Arsenal attacked with all the zest of the cavalry. red shirts circling around the centre of the pitch, passes humming around in short, sharp, staccato bursts. players darting and manoeuvring into place as if predestined to be there. In the most confined of spaces, the ball was played smartly and intelligently within metres of the player who had become available. It was lovely, off the cuff and spontaneous football. How watching England manager Gareth Southgate must wish his England team could sing from the same hymn sheet.
Arsenal looked to be in the ascendancy but then they fell again awkwardly like somebody who falls off their bike and then curses themselves because they'd lost control of the handlebars. Arsenal were now stumbling haphazardly through the game. It must have seemed as though they'd fallen into a muddy ditch or those unforgivingly prickly bushes you see in well manicured parks and gardens.
Leicester would now regain the lead and an air of disgust and apprehension fell over the Emirates like a dirty cloth. In fact the cloth was filthy that at times a nasty smell began to spread across North London. It was never a sinister smell, merely one that began to drift disconcertingly across Finsbury Park. Soon though an air freshener was immediately summoned and Arsenal began to unveil their latest instalment of showboating, dreamlike one touch football and the kind of easy on the eye football that has become their customary trademark.
Half way through the second half substitutions and reinforcements became crucial to this worrying Arsenal scenario. In last year's opening match of the season against Liverpool at the Emirates had subsided and crumpled to the floor like a battered and bruised boxer. That day Liverpool beat Arsenal 4-3 and just for a brief moment, the fans on the terraces must have been fearing the worst. But this time fortunes were ironically reversed and this time Arsenal called four. But the Emirates is no golf course and this was the opening evening of the Premier League football season.
Both Olivier Giroud, now probably persuaded to stay at the Emirates and Aaron Ramsey, so nimbly light on his feet, came on to strengthen an Arsenal attack that looked to be wilting and about to run into a series of cul- de sacs with nowhere to go. Ramsey, particularly, is gradually blending into Arsenal's cohesive attack with a lovely air of independence about him.
During Euro 2016 Ramsey looked to be one of the most outstanding Welsh players the nation has ever produced. True, Ryan Giggs may well have challenged that assumption but Ramsey is wholesomely measured and composed with his passing occasionally giving the impression of Liam Brady with some of his ball control. Now Ramsey once again emerged as the goal scoring maestro, the ball falling perfectly into his path before striking the ball low and venomously into the net for Arsenal's third.
The match had now begun to swing favourably in Arsenal's favour, the pendulum going in the right direction for a now rampant Arsenal side. Arsenal began to play with Leicester like a toy from Hamley's. Now Arsenal homed in, arrowed into and converged into the Leicester penalty area, the ball moving almost poetically from one red shirt to the next. Then there were the subtle, delicate one twos, those decorative flourishes that make Arsenal's football so complete.
With minutes to go and the Emirates crowd at more than fever pitch, Arsenal hunted and foraged in packs, pummelling Leicester's well disciplined defence like somebody knocking on a door and finding that they'd gone out for the evening. Suddenly one last rally resulted in a corner for the home side. Every Arsenal shirt packed the penalty area and the ball was swung into the Leicester area. Olivier Giroud, whose future at the club, had been so shrouded in doubt by the unstoppable force that is Alexis Sanchez, jumped commandingly for the ball and glanced his header towards the net. The strength and trajectory of the header was such that the ball was considered to be well over the line for Arsenal's winner.
And that was that. The crowds began to file away in the most orderly fashion, the devoted Gunners happy go lucky and totally exulted by the 90 minutes that had been presented to them. There was a cool and humid August air about the Emirates. Of course the season is barely a game old and there will be childish confrontations and many a heated argument. Across the Premier League there will be spite, malice, bad blood, dreadful gamesmanship, trickery and duplicity. This season though, football has to be on its best behaviour because the rest of the world may be watching us.
Meanwhile a cross section of women will be gnashing their teeth, lowering their heads in despondency and just allowing their menfolk to do what they normally do in August. No, not fly fishing near a river bank nor is it beginning of the darts and snooker season for this is the time of the year when football scarves are wrapped around masculine necks and sales of meat pies at football grounds reach rarefied heights. August will slowly wend its way towards the darkness of autumn and winter and never know whether the Premier League champions of late spring will find a rightful home. How the men have missed Match of the Day. It's almost as if the game has never been away.
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