Return of the big time

Its been a long waiting period but finally the the big time is back. Premier League kicked off yesterday  evening with the opening match being that of my beloved Arsenal. I have to say the summer break is the hardest time of the year in the life of someone as obsessed about football as me. Seriously , in the last 2-3 months I felt like a fish out of water. It was boring, annoying and downright painful to bear all the doom mongering and silly season's transfer speculations and no football. Then yesterday, it felt like I dived into an ocean full of oxygenated water :D It feels good.

Its always great to have a winning start to the season. We kicked off the season against last season's Coca Cola Championship's winners West Bromwich Albion who got promoted to the Premier League. We won 1-0 thanks to Samir Nasri debut goal for Arsenal. Welcome to the Premier League, you baby faced assasin.

Now I really hope this is the kind of start required for a sustained run in this marathon that is the Premier League. Among other results, Liverpool also had a winning start thanks to a late strike by Fernando "el-nino" Torres. I like that boy. And Egg on the face of every pundit who predicted that sp*rs finally had the chance to break into top four on the expense of their north London neighbours and rivals Arsenal. Gareth Southgate is a good boss. Chelsea and ManU kick off their campaign later today and they would do good by starting off the season with a negative goal difference :D Thats what I am hoping anyways. I expect both of them to win their opening fixture. Its a straight forward prediction on paper. But then, the game is not played on paper. We shall see, fingers crossed.

With most of the analysts, moron pundits and bloggers over the Internet writing us off even before the first ball was kicked, Arsenal virtually have no pressure to deliever. Its an irony that all these people are discounting an Arsene Wenger side. You can never discount an side whose in-charge is Arsene. He wears a magic hat. I planned to do an analysis of Arsenal's chances but instead boring readers with all kinds os details, I will just copy paste contents of an email I sent to Espn's Football Focus the other day. Its a great show, with good analysis, at time a bit anti-Arsenal but enjoyable nonetheless. And I love the anchor Jhon Dykes. He conducts the whole show so well.

Wenger is uncomfortable handling big guns? Arsenal to fail?

From: Muntazir Mehdi (muntazironline@hotmail.com)

Sent: Saturday, 16 August 2008 9:27:09 AM

To: footballfocus@espnstar.com

It was really disappointing to hear from Mr. McMahon that Arsene Wenger cannot handle big names. They way Mr. McMahon kept repeating this in football focus and then in football forecast, it made me wonder if he has only started observing Arsenal for last 2-3 seasons. I mean come on! get your eyes open and see. Tony Adams, Steve Bould, Patrick Vieira, Emmanuel Petit, Marc Overmars, Thierry Henry they all had fairly long runs under Arsene Wenger and with these superstars he won two doubles!! a season unbeaten in the league and a few more FA Cups. Just because Arsene has not signed a big name player does not mean he cannot handle the big guys. And then he says in Football Forecast that none of the big name players would like to join Arsenal because they will not be winning anything for 4th year now. How do you say that!

Let me explain. He says Arsenal are weaker this year than last year. Did you for an instance try to analyse it realistically. Arsenal only lost one player in the real sense and that is Hleb. lehman and gilberto virtually did not play the whole of last season. Hleb is now replaced by Nasri who has played 4 seasons and has had 150 plus league appearances for Marseille. He is just as good as Hleb technically and he can score goals for a change. With Ramsey signed from under the nose of redNose it was a great pleasure for the fans. Arsene says he will sign another experienced midfielder before UCL qualifier home leg. As for Flamini, he was free to sign with any club. Milan used that to their advantage and the the transfer that they would have paid had Flamini been under contract, they added that to player's wages. Arsenal could not match that and however good a player Flamini those wages would have been unjust considering the wage structure at the club. And to put the record straight Arsenal's wage bill is almost exactly as that of United and certainly more than his beloved Liverpool. You can't say that Arsene pays his kids less.

Seriously review Arsenal's squad and tell me that they cant improve on last year when horrific injuries and stupid refereeing cost them more than 10 points if not more.
Had Taylor not broke Eduardo's leg and referee not given a stupid penalty Arsenal would have went 8 points clear that day at Birmingham. Had Drogba been booked when he scored  the equalizer at Chelsea v Arsenal and took his shhirt off and then booked again for diving into the crowd, I am not convinced Chelsea would have won that game with ten men. Had Patrice Evra not dived, and referee not awarded a free kick, Heargreaves would not have scored the winner at old trafford. Not to mention the UCL ties where Liverpool were taught how to play football yet the referees got key penalty decisions wrong. Peters why did you forsake us? :( List goes on when Arsenal were hard done by. Point is that you don't get unlucky with injuries and stupid refereeing every season. So its unfair to write Arsenal off like he does season in season out.

Ok, Mr. McMahon is entitled to his opinion and I respect that but this is really disrespectful to the great man. Last season he said Arsenal wont be in top 4. And I emailed then and said that Arsenal might even pip his beloved liverpool and they did. I say that again this year. If Arsenal finish behind Liverpool I will kiss a goat. Otherwise Mr. Mcmahon should eat his very own hat. If you heaven't learnt anything in the past 10-12 years, learn this. Never discount an Arsene Wenger side. And him saying that Arsenal fans are desperate to win trophies and that wenger needs to deliever otherwise fans would question him and blah blah..

Let me tell you something as an Arsenal fan. Arsene Knows! And he wears a magic hat. And in Arsene we trust!

I just wanted to register the opinion of Arsenal fans here and I hope the panel can live with that. If I have been harsh I apologise but seriously Mr Mcmahon can at times do more with respecting Arsenal, Arsene and the fans. I really felt hurt when he was repeatedly saying "He cannot handle big names", hence this email. Thanks for reading all this, I really appreciate it.
Cheers
Muntazir Mehdi
Islamabad, Pakistan

So now on a note of positive anticipation and good will I leave you here praying that finally this is one of the years for Arsene Wenger's red and white army.

Till next time..