Sunday, March 19, 2006

Did you bask in those two hours?

When we were in the top four? Ah, they were gorgeous. And with the Spuds still goal-less at h-t everything seemed to be coming up roses. Malheureusement, they fought back to pull off a 2-0 win at the, frankly, dire Birmingham, and put themselves back into 4th spot.

So it's eight games left and we're still two points behind. That's ok. We just need to keep on winning, and hope the Spuds drop points. Like I said before, they should drop more points than us on the run in. Our match versus Pompey next week could be quite tough though, given their recent resrugance of form, and TH's embarrassing love for them.

In a way it's all quite nice. Unlike the last, say, decade, the match versus them at Highbury will actually mean more than us merely completing our humiliating dominance over Spurs. This season it has the potential to decide who get's the opportunity to play in the CL. A truly massive game. And this is, I hate to say it, a decent spurs team. We're still better, but they've really done well to put themselves in the position they have this season. We just need to remind them that it's not the done thing for them to actually finish above us.

So it was a good day yesterday rather than a great one. We won, but so did Blackburn, Bolton and Spuds. I don't think Blackburn have enough to really push themselves into fourth, but big Sam's bruisers could still certainly do so given their games in hand. How Kevin Nolan isn't in the England squad, as usual, only Sven knows.

Our game against Charlton was one of the joyous, embarassingly one-sided affairs where the team seems to think it's still on the pre-season tour of Austria. Henry has really returned to his all-destroying, unstoppable, force-of-nature self. How TH didn't score, only Adebayor knows. To be fair to our Togolese goal machine, he did score a great poachers goal, and he seems to be doing better than my original prediction of a 1-in-4 scoring rate, although he actually should have scored a hat-trick yesterday. Hleb was superb. He looks best when he's running forward at defenders, taking them on, and threading final balls through. I really think Henry will grow to love Hleb if he continues in this vein of form, and it was great to see him get on the score-sheet. Hopefully he won't be overly affected by the fairly tumultuous events in his native Belarus at the moment. Some world affairs for you there.


The defence looked solid, Fabregas continues to grow in each game, Dennis showed a few touches which brought back fond memories, RvP was back, and Bobby got on the score-sheet. Let the good times roll eh? Gilberto even tried a long distance shot which i think may have actually hit the corner flag. And no-one seemed to care, as they were all so happy.

If we'd been in this form all season we'd be coasting in second or third. As it is, we'll have to make up for our rubbish form from, well, November to February to struggle into fourth. We can do it, and we're finally looking like we deserve it. We just need to keep it together, and maintain this form and belief that's grown in the team.

In other news, there's an excellent article on the Observer website by Amy Lawrence about the appaling state of Juve's fans. The NOTW is running some rubbish about us already listening to offers for TH from Inter.

The Mail has us linked with Joey Barton (Yes please) and The Star says we've practically signed Nikola Zigic from Red Star Belgrade. He dwarfs Peter Crouch in height - 6' 10" - and scoring - 55 goals in 77 games. All sounds interesting but will proabably come to nothing. As long as bloody Baptista isn't mentioned, I don't care.

C'est tout - have a relaxing Sunday.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

???If we'd been in this form all season we'd be coasting in second or third????

What rubbish! If we had this kinda form all season, we'd be first by a long mile!

Goonerboy said...

Possibly, although i think Chelsea were always going to be too strong for us this season. It's a shame we can't play them at the moment though - we'd beat them.

There season from August to early February, has just been too strong though. If we were second now, and about 6 points behind, and we could play them again, we might be in with a shout.

I actually think 3rd/4th, given the restructuring and injuries we've had this season, would be a great achievement.