Arsenal Will Surprise People This Year - Even Without New Signings -BY FL This seems to be an article written by Arsenal fans ever season – similar to Liverpool fans’ infamous ‘This is our year’ stuff – but there’s usually good reason for that. After all, every season seems to be the one predicted as being the one where The Gunners finally slip out of the top four, and it still hasn’t happened. While Arsenal may be seen as under-achieving when taking their proud, trophy-winning history into account, it has to be said that they’ve often gone above and beyond expectations for them in the media. The best example of this would be the 2007/08 season, in which they lead the chase for the league title up until an unexpected collapse in late February. That summer had seen Arsenal lose captain and all-time record goal-scorer Thierry Henry, as well as Freddie Ljungberg and Jose Reyes, bringing in Bacary Sagna and little-known Eduardo da Silva. They were predicted to struggle given the loss of their main man, but ended up surprising people. Emmanuel Adebayor took on much of the burden left by Henry, while the midfield four of Tomas Rosicky, Cesc Fabregas, Mathieu Flamini and Alex Hleb had fantastic chemistry. The main business Arsenal have done so far has been bringing in Yaya Sanogo with Gervinho leaving, with most other departures being fringe players who probably played five games between them last year, so transfers aren’t something to take into account yet when predicting how they’ll do next season in comparison to last. The latter point, however, certainly is: the chemistry of the side will be much improved, partly due to the afore-mentioned lack of first-team exits. This summer stands to be the first summer in which Arsenal don’t lose anyone from the first team, let alone any key players. They won’t have to adjust to a new system built around different players, but will head into a season with pretty much the same system. It took the current side time to adjust last season, but once they had formed a cohesive unit, the Gunners hit form at the end of the season, winning eight of their final 11 games in the 2012/13 season.
Posted on: Tue, 13 Aug 2013 11:01:35 +0000
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