By Walter Broeckx
I think many people could write a book about us losing yesterday. They could point at the mistake player X made, or at the bad pass player Z made. Or we could blame the ref, which I partly do in fact for the first goal. As he made the mistake of playing advantage when there was no advantage on. And even when Bendtner was dispossessed he still kept giving the advantage signal which looked a bit stupid at the time.
But as most things in life are simple I just will tell you in a few moments why we lost. And no it was not down to a bad performance by any of our players. Even if we would have had all our players available it wouldn’t have mattered. Even with Cesc on fire we still would have lost. It would have been just one of those days.
And no it was not down to Shakhtar playing utterly brilliant football. No even with them playing utterly bad we still would have lost the game. It would just have been one of those days for us.
Even if Theo would have gone on a dozen runs like the magnificent run from which he scored we still wouldn’t have won it on the day. It was just going to be one of those days.
Even if Fabianski would have produced some stunning saves, you can hardly give him any blame for the goals I would think, still somewhere down the line a ball would have been deflected somewhere and would have crept in. I knew it would be one of those days.
Even if the ref would have been the best we ever had seen and had a perfect game still something would have happened. The ball would have gone flat at the moment Theo took his shot at goal or something else very strange would happen. A dog running on to the pitch and Theo falling over him when he was going to shoot. We could have known it before kick off.
In fact I could have known it before and I could have told it to Arsenal so they wouldn’t have to put up the effort of going all the way to Ukraine on a long flight just to lose a game. We could have stayed in London and given them the 3 points. It would have been the same at the end of the day and much cheaper also.
By now I can imagine some of you thinking: just spit it out Walter. Just tell us what you are talking about.
The reason we lost is religion. And no I will not start some religious war over here and tell you it’s God, Allah, Bhagwaan, Yahweh or whatever name you can give a god, who is to blame.
No it is the subdivision of gods that is involved. It is the gods that are known as football gods. It’s a bunch of er…. gods, that sit there somewhere and who arrange things in football how they like it. A ball against the post. This isn’t the players fault, no the football gods didn’t want it to go in. A missed penalty? The football gods made the player slip at the moment he was going to shoot.
They are just some evil minded gods who just do things as they like them and who enjoy fans feeling miserable. And at the start of each season they see for some things which they will use against all the teams. Because they are not anti-Arsenal. No they enjoy to mess up with all the teams. But they decide the outcome of the games by making their own rules. Rules that are not printed in the newspapers or told about in MOTD. No, one has to look for them and find them yourself to understand them.
And so I went looking and I found the answer. The answer is “3”. Just 3. Nothing more, nothing less. To understand this you have to go back one month. Go to 3 October and try to remember what you did on 3 October? I give you a clue: you were feeling rather miserable in the evening because on 3 October we lost to Chelsea.
And now exact one month later on 3 November we lose again, and again we will feel a bit miserable. So for me it is clear to see. It is those evil football gods who have declared at the start of the season: Arsenal will lose their games played on the 3th of each month. So it shall be and so it will be. And they all laughed and found it rather amusing and fun and then went on to the next team and decided it would lose their games when it would rain. Things like that.
And we could beat Chelsea on any day. We could beat Shakhtar on any day. But not on the 3rd of each month. On that day we have to suffer. Because the football gods have decided it that way. So is this all bad and are we doomed? And are we going to sit down and feel miserable for ourselves and cry a bit?
Well in fact, no. We are not. Because even if we know we cannot beat the football gods what we can do is check the fixture list and on that list we can see that we don’t play again on the 3th of a month. No games in the EPL on the 3rd for us. The only thing we must avoid is that the home game against Blackburn on April 2nd will be changed to Sunday 3rd.
No games in the Carling cup on the 3rd for us. No games in the FA cup on the 3rd for us for the moment. In fact there is only one chance that we would play this season on the 3rd of a month. And this would be in May. As the semi final of the CL is played on the 3rd or the 4thof May. So the only way we can be stopped to win the CL is to have some bad luck with the draw and if we would have to play the return leg of the CL semi final on 3 May. But then again if we win the first leg with a big difference even the football gods will have to let us go to the final.
