Yesterday Arsenal huffed and puffed a bit to pull of a 1-0 win over a spirited West Ham United. Arsenal’s midfield were all over the place - Cesc was erratic, Denilson his usual ineffective self, and even Song was caught out of place a few times (but the goal forgives all sin). Arshavin had another match of losing the ball in good positions, and for once Chamakh found a Premier League defence he couldn’t trouble.
But Arsenal still connived to grind out chance after chance, smacking the woodwork twice and forcing Robert Green into three or four quality saves, and in the end after a lot of persistence, Song popped up for the winner. It might not have been a great performance, but it was enough - and as the cliché goes, it’s winning when playing badly that’s the hallmark of a good team. As Arseblog says:
Not every game can be scintillating and packed with goals. You have to win some ugly ones as well and yesterday’s victory was right up there with Iain Dowie.
Chelsea have perfected this art - yesterday rolling over Blackburn despite the hosts having the better chances; in fact after a storming early start to the season they’ve settled into a series of workmanlike victories (against us, Wolves and Blackburn) to cement their spot at the top of the league. Teams have worked out pretty quickly this season that they don’t want a pummelling like Wigan and West Brom got, and can’t sit back against them, so Chelsea’s victories are getting harder and harder fought.
If we carry on holding second place, we may be heading the same way. Time for us to remind ourselves that the only way for us to win the title is if we grind out wins where we might have got draws or losses before. So we should start cherishing the ugly wins for what they are, and drop the word “ugly” entirely from our vocabulary.
(Besides, all other things being equal, wasn’t it great fun winning with a last-minute goal rather than rolling out 3-0 comfortably?)
