Days of Dutch Courage

By: Abby | August 13th, 2008

Rawr!
(Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

Despite playing a midfield of toddlers and Eboue (who has the maturity of one), and by all accounts playing, um, not at our standard, let’s say, we’re still leaving Enschede with two away goals and a win.

Unfortunately, I can’t say for myself how they played, since Champions League games are not scheduled for Seattle’s viewing times. Instead, I read a minute-by-minute in between bouts of working. But from the accounts of people I trust, it was a game in which Arsenal did not play particularly well, that our passing game was completely off, that our normally reliable full-backs made errors, that we were just awful in the first half, and we won by two goals to nil.

Who says we can’t win ugly?

The goals themselves came from two players with a lot to prove. The first was a free-kick, bundled over the line somehow by reinstated captain William Gallas. He does have a knack for coming up with goals when the situation’s desperate, and today he did just that with his goal in the 63rd minute of the game. At the 82nd, apparently Theo and Adebayor made their first useful move of the game, combining for Adebayor (of course) to score to give us a nice cushion to take back to London.

Clearly, not ideal, but the fact is that despite all the issues, despite an opposition team knowing that this would be their best chance to take something from a big team in front of their home fans, we won. Winning when not playing well, someone said that was a sign of good things…

That’s not to say that our managing to end up with a win in the Netherlands means we should be content with the situation. We need some reinforcements, to be sure. And I’m sure that the one who knows that the most is Arsene Wenger. There seems to be this idea around the Internet that he doesn’t think we need another signing and that the Twente result will only encourage that idea. However, the actual quotes from Wenger read differently:

“If you consider all that, you can see our squad is so short. I have said many times we are short of one player and I hope I will be capable of doing something this week or before the transfer deadline.”

Considering how often Wenger talks about transfers (never), I’d be very surprised if we don’t make a signing. It may not be as soon as I’d like, but he’s the manager, not me. The thought of having this same skeleton squad for the opener against West Brom is a little worrying, I’ll admit. But, so it goes.

After all, spending a lot of money doesn’t necessarily mean that we’d have done any better. Liverpool relied on a penalty save to escape from Belgium with a 0-0 draw- and we didn’t spend over £20 million on a striker.