EPL 2007-2008: Arsenal 2 – Reading 0
Posted by Pierre Igot in: FootballApril 21st, 2008 • 9:02 am
It was, unfortunately, the kind of routine league victory that has been missing so much in the past couple of months. It’s good to see the team return to winning ways, in style, but of course it is far too late now.
Manchester United might have dropped two points, but it’s a two-horse race between them and Chelsea now. The big clash at Stamford Bridge on Saturday will be crucial, but Arsenal fans will be watching it as neutrals, because the result will have no impact on the outcome of their own season. One can always dream of Manchester United losing their remaining three games and Chelsea losing their other two games, but it’s about as likely as lightning hitting Wayne Rooney and turning him into a beautiful frog.
It’s really too bad, because three more victories is definitely a possibility for the Gunners, which would mean finishing with a grand total of 83 points—a huge improvement over the last two seasons, but one that won’t count for anything except for a psychological boost at the beginning of the next season.
Still, even this comfortable 2-0 victory against relegation-threatened Reading couldn’t mask the fact that this Arsenal team still has trouble finishing off the opposition. What we really need is a string of more emphatic victories that reassert the Gunners’ superiority in an unequivocal fashion. And of course we need all the current players to stay at the club.
I was going to add “except for Éboué,” except that, shockingly enough, when Éboué came on on Saturday for the injured Touré at right-back, he actually had a pretty good game. Of course, it doesn’t mean much in a game like this, but it really made it look like this “Éboué as a winger” thing—which has been a bit of a nightmare, to be honest—had actually never happened in the first place. Does this mean we could use Éboué against as a right-back ahead of Sagna? No way. But maybe we could keep him as a capable substitute…
OK, maybe not.