Good morning everyone! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading Andrew Allen as much as I have the last couple of days, but he’s passed the torch (more on the Olympics later) to me to accompany you through today and the weekend.
There hasn’t been much in the way of news since the friendly against Bournemouth, so the future of Emile Smith Rowe feels like the only place to start. I have, I’m sure like many of you, many conflicting thoughts and feelings about this one.
I think there’s a very clear and obvious divide between Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal before Chelsea at home in December 2020 and Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal during and after that game. Following a lot of playing time at left-back and wingback, Bukayo Saka played further forward that day and Smith Rowe came into the team for his first Premier League start under Arteta and just the second of his career. Arsenal had picked up two points from the previous seven Premier League games and won just two of the previous 11. We were 15th in the league and, 15 games in, only four teams (Fulham, West Brom, Burnley, Sheffield United) had scored fewer goals.
It was lockdown, it was the winter, the football had been stodgy as it had ever been for months. Arteta was almost certainly hanging by a thread. And then two Hale End boys lifted the fog. Smith Rowe, with Saka, added creativity and energy to a team that had been playing with neither. The game sped up when the ball arrived at Smith Rowe’s feet, moves were knitted together. Not just against Chelsea, but in the week that followed against Brighton and West Brom too. Arsenal started to play watchable football again, started scoring again, started winning again. And we all felt joy again, thanks to these two kids who had never been under contract with any other club.
When fans could return to games en masse at the end of the following summer, every Arsenal match was soundtracked by Status Quo’s Rockin’ All Over The World. Arsenal fans were rocking, all over the world….
Source link : https://arseblog.com/2024/07/when-esr-had-us-rockin-all-over-the-world/
Author : Lewis Ambrose
Publish date : 2024-07-26 06:22:38
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