The way I see it – Arsenal's Easter Period

Last updated : 08 April 2004 By Jason Hogan

However if Tuesday night illustrated anything it was how unfairness can reach extreme levels.

Losing to Chelsea (rare though it is) is never pleasant at the best of times but you see, we were not playing any ordinary Chelsea side on Tuesday. No, we were playing a Chelsea side that has been given the unique privilege of being allowed to have their cake and eat it by a hypocritical press, a hypocritical media and the hypocritical so called experts and hangers on attached to them.

First this bloody Russian bloke comes in from nowhere, spends an absolute fortune on new players and on the back of that, all the "hypocrites" out there lapped it all up making jokes both directly and indirectly at Arsenal's expense. Then all the "hypocrites" start saying "Hang on a minute, they need time to gel into a team. You can't expect them to do this and do that straightaway and how dare anybody put Ranieri (a man who has yet to win diddly sh*t in the best part of four years let's not forget) under any pressure".

In fact, by the time we got round to Tuesday night, I was amazed that the game wasn't billed like a boxing match between, in the blue corner, a team of poor, pampered little rich boys (chief of whom was the beleaguered Ranieri) who can spend all the money they want but must ALWAYS be sympathised with and must NEVER put under any pressure against, in the red corner, a team that at every turn have been ridiculed, belittled, slagged off and disdainfully sneered at for being a bunch of relatively skint reprobates that incredulously had the nerve to ever put themselves in a position where they could possibly win a Treble .

With the weight of the "hypocrites" sympathy, empathy and partiality drastically in their favour and with all the "hypocrites" doing everything they could to undermine the Arsenal going into Tuesday's game, it was always going to be far easier for them to go out and approach the game with confidence.

Still, what hurts me most of all in the light of what happened, is that the "hypocrites" that went so far out of their way to acclaim the arrival of Abramovich and all the money he has spent, the "hypocrites" that have then gone on to spend all season alleviating the pressure on everyone at Stamford Bridge in spite of that and the "hypocrites" who spent the whole of last summer making Arsenal out to be laughing stocks in the wake of it all, will be having a big belly laugh at us and raising a large glass of whatever over the next few days in salute to the alien entity that is Chelsea. Call me a bad loser if you want but it is the thought of that and downright injustice of it all that makes me so angry and I say in all sincerity that I hope toasting the result chokes every bloody one of them.

Now it's time to get down to what really matters – where it all goes from here for the Arsenal.

Just over a year ago when Valencia had knocked us out of Europe I remember sitting on my living room sofa late into the night and the early hours of the following morning stewing away when I got to thinking about what I now call the Jimmy White Syndrome.

You see, whilst I was stewing away, I found myself drawing a parallel between both White and the Arsenal and the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that there was an uncanny similarity between him as an individual and us as a football club.

Those of you that are knowledgeable about the game of snooker will know that White is regarded to be the most talented player never to become snooker world champion. As a result, people in and around the game have invariably always regarded him as someone who plays great snooker but someone that has not quite become a great snooker player.

As for the Arsenal, well, even our many detractors cannot argue that we have a team that plays great football but there is still a lingering doubt as to whether we are truly a great football team. After all, we (as is the case with White in his own sport) have not managed to win the "big one" and we have not won half the things our talent should have brought us.

Still, whether the current Arsenal side is considered to be great or not, I honestly believe that we DO have a lot of character. You only have to go back to last year's cup final for proof of that. By the time that cup final came around I was so disenchanted with things I didn't even bother watching us play in last year's cup final, at least from the start anyway.

It would have been very easy for the Arsenal players to have gone into that game feeling the same way. If they had, then it would have been easy for the Saints to have taken advantage of that and gone away with the spoils but to the players credit, they didn't feel sorry for themselves and they ground out a victory.

The press and the media, typically, still couldn't give us outright credit for winning the cup and dismissed our success as just consolation but for me, that was the day when I thought that we could get our title back. And, just for the record, even in spite of what has gone on in the last four days or so, I still believe that now.

In fact, in a funny kind of way, the level of incentive we have should be huge. Contrary to what has begun to be suggested in certain quarters, winning the title wouldn't be a consolation prize for us at all – given all the derogatory things that have been said about us it would be, pound for pound, our greatest achievement for decades.

I have made no secret of the fact that getting our title back is the one thing that I have wanted above everything else this season. Yes, it hurts that we have been knocked out of the cup and therefore deprived of the chance to carve yet another niche for ourselves in the record books and yes, it was bitterly disappointing to go out in Europe and still fall short of fulfilling our potential, but we still have a chance to show that we CAN still win big matches and above all that we ARE still winners.

The upcoming games against Liverpool and Newcastle are not the easiest. I have heard Liverpool and Newcastle fans saying that we are now there for the taking.

It's all about character for us now. We have endured four days when justice and logic conspired against us but at the end of the day that's what can happen in cup football.

Nothing has changed as far as the title goes however and morally, we have a duty to bring it back to where it rightfully belongs. I believe that we are up to the task. Let's go out and prove it.