How did the ancient Egyptians build the pyramids? Where did the massive plinths of Stonehenge come from? What happened to Arsenal FC in the second half of the 2002-2003 season? Yes, these are the great mysteries of our time. It?s a bit hard to recall now, but back in September it wasn?t unreasonable for an Arsenal fan to wonder if we?d lose at all this year or who our opponent would be in the Champions League final. Fast forward seven months and things have changed quite dramatically. Now as I write this we are still mathematically alive for the Double and are in a position 18 other teams would kill to be in. But yet, it seems like the glass in half empty.
I don?t get to see all the games and quite frankly it would be ludicrous of me to throw out theories that involve tactics. But it can?t be denied that at some point around the mid-point of the season, things changed for the squad. It wasn?t devastating injuries. While Freddie and Super Bob weren?t at their peak form, they were here in the second half. As were Sol, Thierry, Paddy and most of the other regulars. We still got contributions from people like Sylvain Wiltord. If I had to pick one exact moment, it would be the 90th minute against Liverpool on Jan. 29. Emile Heskey (!) puts in the header (!) that earns them the draw. From that point forward things have gone sour.
I don?t know the cause, but I know the effect:
In the 45 games played as of this writing (including the League, FA Cup, Worthington Cup and Champions League) there have been only three occasions where the score hasn?t been level (not including 0-0) or in our favor at some point in the match. Of our nine losses this year, three times we gave up the winner after the score was tied; three times we had a lead and lost the game; and three times we were just plain beaten.
Of our 15 (15!) draws in which goals were scored (we had another 3 nil-nil draws, all in the Champions League), eight times we held the lead and let the other team come back, including two, two-goal leads. So, of the 24 losses or draws in which goals we scored we had the opportunity for a better result in 21 of those games. Amazingly, we?ve only lost two games since the start of 2003. But, every draw in 2003 has been a game in which we held the lead at one point. Five of those games were in the League, two points dropped in each, that?s ten points. If we had held on in half those games it would have been an additional five points, and we?d be tied for first place with a game in hand right now. Where could we have picked up those five points? Bolton, Aston Villa and Liverpool where on January 29 we held leads of 1-nil and 2-1 but ended up with the draw. From that point every draw we had was one in which we held the lead at some point. Eight draws in a row.
3 Responses to “Jan. 29, 2003”
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April 29th, 2003 at 11:12 am
Good points. In retrospect, I think that you are right about the Liverpool game.
While it may be a slim chance (of winning the title), I think that we should not get into post-mortems just yet. It’s all there to play for in the last 4 games of the season.
Way back in October when we were playing like we were from another planet, I replied to an editorial about going undefeated the whole season. I wrote that the season is long, and you cannot predict what is going to happen. The memory of 98-99 was still in my mind. It looks like it could well happen again this year (although we could still win the FA Cup). It’s not long to go now, so let’s hold off and support the team for these 3 weeks. Then we have a whole 3months with no football to chew the fat about what happened and what to improve.
April 29th, 2003 at 11:37 am
Independently of your assessment, I also came to the conclusion that our season had begun to falter when we failed to beat Liverpool at Anfield by conceding an equalizer in the 90th minute. The nature of that particular equalizer was the start of a pattern that has been repeated many times since - namely, poor defending. I don’t just mean the back four, I mean from the forwards to the midfielders and all the way to the defenders. A specific area where our defending has been found wanting, concerns the diagonal cross to the back post. I think a review of the video will find that in the latter half of the season we have defended woefully in such situations.
The only other significant observation from my perspective is that we have had no-one step forward and be a match winner of those scrappy games, like we had last year with the combination of Bergkamp and Ljungberg. We’ve just been uninspired in the run-in this year - unable to dig for the ugly win as often as needed.
April 29th, 2003 at 2:23 pm
I’ve seen nearly every game this season and I think the damage was done earlier. Between 19th October and 7th December we lost 4 out of 8 league games and the team has been inconsistant ever since!
Perversely, we have never led the Premiership at Christmas before, and no team with that many points lead at Christmas has ever failed to win the title. Our most consistant battle has been the one against ourselves; the fight to keep form and play to our strengths!
Having struggled to find our fluidity all season, it’is pretty amazing that the boys have held on up there for as long as they have!