Arsenal are in a difficult place at the moment, as they are every couple of months. Every area of the club is being questioned, both from the outside and the inside, more notably from certain areas of the fanbase.

Judging from various communications coming out of the club in various forms, they aren’t really helping themselves these days.

Victory

Aston Villa were dispatched today, with two Cazorla goals seeing the strugglers sent back to Birmingham with their rather mouthy tails between their legs. I was at the game today, and noticed several things from my Upper Tier vantage point.

First of all, Aston Villa fans are really irritating. Like, properly eye-gougingly twat-like. They only have one song, which is to the tune of ‘Kumbaya’, and generally consists of an insult, followed by ‘my lord’. They sang this for about eighty minutes, spending five minutes chanting about Robin Van Persie leaving because Arsenal lack quality. An attempt to get an answering chant regarding Shaun Maloney’s similar decision didn’t work very well.

Carl Jenkinson, Aaron Ramsey, and most obviously Santi himself were the winners of the day. Jenkinson recovered from his poor form of late, while Ramsey showed what an intelligent player he is, filling in at central midfield and right-back with general effectiveness. It’s good to have players like him, and he’s gradually winning over the critics he retains on the terraces.

Cazorla of course, brought his ‘A’ game for a change, which was nice to see. Goals from midfield have been lacking of late, though of course they seem to be coming in place of goals from attack. Once we balance the two, our attacking issues will be mainly sorted. Chemistry is clearly lacking, as numerous aborted moments of pressure proved.

Not helping

But Arsenal huffed and puffed to victory, winning a game that could have been won much more easily with only five minutes to spare. Giving more food to the critics won’t relieve the pressure on the side and manager, and Wenger doesn’t help himself at times.

He spoke yesterday about how Arsenal ‘have money now’, and claimed we could afford to sign general big-money example name Radamel Falcao, wages and all.

He’s also banned the Sun from Colney, which is good, and been rather more aggressive towards the press than usual, which isn’t so good.

Annoying the press just makes them buzz around ever more frantically, and there are sadly many weak-willed individuals who will lap up everything they read in various rags, which only serves to turn them against the club. Just from being at the Emirates today I could sense a lot of pent-up anger which almost surfaced when Arsenal conceded that weak equaliser.

The best thing to do is continue as usual, not to provoke undue attention with talk of transfer warchests and confrontations with journalist.

Transfers

It’s the sudden news of a summer warchest that’s annoying too. Wenger’s words yesterday can’t be taken at face value at all, as we’ve been told about how there is money available for seasons and seasons now, and little has changed in terms of the transfer policy. If it is true, and there are suggestions it could be, it only means we’ve been lied to since the stadium move, and are now expected to ignore it.

Targets thrown around include Stevan Jovetic, Victor Wanyama, and Benedikt Howedes, but it’s just noise. Half of it is to secure Club-level renewals, and the rest is just to calm people down. Right now, it’s far easier to the Club to knuckle down and just get on with things quietly, starting with the small matter of some noisy neighbours asking for a kicking.

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