{"id":6220,"date":"2022-05-23T13:11:30","date_gmt":"2022-05-23T12:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=6220"},"modified":"2022-05-27T10:13:21","modified_gmt":"2022-05-27T09:13:21","slug":"we-all-love-thursdays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=6220","title":{"rendered":"We All Love Thursdays"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Arsenal thumped a sorry Everton 5-1 to finish the campaign with a flourish but Tottenham\u2019s win at Norwich condemned us to yet another season out of Europe\u2019s elite competition. Disappointing to say the least but only because of the unexpected position we found ourselves in due to our own merit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite our likely failure to finish 4th<\/sup>, the fans generated a raucous atmosphere before, during and, indeed, after the game. We began brightly and Martinelli forced a save from Begovic. On 25 minutes we were awarded a penalty following a lengthy VAR check for a handball from ex-Arsenal man, Alex Iwobi. Perhaps slightly contentious but the ball had travelled from a fair distance away and the Nigerian did appear to move his arm towards the ball. Martinelli stepped up to take it and calmly sent Begovic the wrong way. 1-0 to the Arsenal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just four minutes later we doubled our lead. Saka, who is our only player to appear in every league game this season, whipped in a corner, Xhaka got a flick on, and Nketiah reacted quickly to nod the ball home. That\u2019s 5 goals in 7 starts for Eddie. It may well be his last appearance as his contract is up although I don\u2019t think I\u2019m alone in saying I hope he gets a new deal. Right on halftime, the Toffees pulled one back. Iwobi played a through ball to Calvert Lewin whose deflected cut back wrong-footed Holding and Ramsdale as it found Donny Van De Beek who tapped home to half the deficit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arsenal started the second half quickly and on 56 minutes we restored our two-goal cushion. Saka rolled the ball to the edge of the box from a corner and Cedric slammed the ball into the back of the net with an exquisite finish. His first goal since his Arsenal Debut in July 2020. There\u2019s something about the final day of the season where someone who hasn\u2019t scored for ages always scores. And just three minutes later it was 4-1. Once again it came about following a corner situation. Saka\u2019s ball was half cleared by Calvert Lewin, but Cedric was able to find Gabriel whose shot hit Begovic\u2019s leg and looped in. Gabriel is the highest scoring defender in the league with five goals. That\u2019s more than Lacazette. We should probably sign a striker. Or three! Then on 82 minutes we made it five. P\u00e9p\u00e9, who had come on for Saka, found \u00d8degaard on the edge of the area, the Norwegian jinked inside a defender, shifted the ball onto his left foot and bent it into the far bottom corner. Goal of the day by a mile and a wonderful way to end the campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, there we have it! The 2021\/22 campaign has come to an end and we finish in 5th<\/sup> place. So what\u2019s the key take away from this season? Well, I think generally speaking this has been a year of progression. Certainly, a vast improvement on the last couple of years. For one thing we\u2019ve gone up three places from eighth to fifth, qualifying for Europe via our league position for the first time since 2019 under Emery (also fifth). I think the main reason for some disappointment is the fact that we\u2019ve missed out to Tottenham\u2019s benefit. If it were Man United or even Chelsea, I doubt there would be as much deflation as there is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately the battle was lost in January where we failed to strengthen, and they went out and got Kulusevski who does look like a talented player. We may never know the reasons for this. Perhaps the documentary will shed some light in that regard, but ultimately it cost us. But only just! It was in our hands this time last week which makes it even more painful but finishing fifth in the most competitive league in the world is far from the end of the world. We will learn from this. We have a young playing squad and a young manager. Add just a bit of experience and depth and we will get there. The gap has been significantly reduced this season; we just lacked that little bit of oomph to get us over the line. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arteta is here to stay, it would be a major shock if we were to lose any of our key players this summer, so let\u2019s see who we bring in now. In just a couple of weeks we will be back to refreshing Twitter every 3 seconds to see if we\u2019ve agreed terms with Yann M\u2019vila or if Higuain\u2019s brother\u2019s uncle\u2019s dad\u2019s cousin\u2019s dog\u2019s third wife twice removed has told the press that he has always dreamed of playing for Arsenal, but his mum said he can\u2019t go anywhere until he\u2019s unloaded the dishwasher. And thanks to FIFA and their infinite wisdom (and some bulky looking brown envelopes) we don\u2019t even have a World Cup this summer to distract ourselves from this nonsense. So, find yourselves a park bench to shout at some pigeons and maybe some clouds and stare into the abyss as we wait for the fixtures to come out because for some strange reason we find ourselves so emotionally attached to watching a dozen multi-millionaires kicking a ball about. Quite often not very well! Football, eh? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have a great summer all and try not to think about Arsenal too much. It\u2019s been a hell of a ride this season and we all collectively look forward to August when we get to do it all over again! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until then\u2026..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arsenal thumped a sorry Everton 5-1 to finish the campaign with a flourish but Tottenham\u2019s win at Norwich condemned us to yet another season out of Europe\u2019s elite competition. Disappointing to say the least but only because of the unexpected position we found ourselves in due to our own merit.  Despite our likely failure to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6220"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6220"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6224,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6220\/revisions\/6224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}