Arsenal Should Not Celebrate Scraping Through Any More

What a finale it was. 1-0 down with 88 minutes played and ending the game 2-1 up shows just how frantic it got in those final minutes, but the feeling at the end of the match should have been relief, not celebrations.

Arsenal need to be aiming higher, not focusing on who’s below them

We toiled for 88 minutes before we finally showed any signs of scoring against a side that we should really be beating comfortably. Yet when 90 minutes came and the final whistle went the vast majority of Arsenal’s players celebrated like they’d played brilliantly, but Sanchez summed up how they should have felt; wandering around shaking his head. I think Arsenal need to tackle this small-time mentality.

This is symptomatic of Arsenal in recent years, where we have become the side that celebrates finishing above Tottenham rather than anything else. I mean, it’s something fun for the fans but when Wilshere is hanging off the side of the FA Cup bus screaming about beating Spurs to a trophy it makes us seem the smaller side.

You hear far more from Manchester City about beating Manchester United than the other way around because United have bigger successes to worry about and quite simply beating Spurs shouldn’t be a defining point any more. We are a bigger team, with better players and finishing above a team that changes managers faster than Mertesacker changes direction should not be celebrated nearly as much as it is.

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It’s tough to try and push a mentality change on a group of players but it does need to be tried. I think the ‘small time’ mentality that some of the Arsenal players are happy with going for fourth every year and whilst, as an end result, it’s not a bad place to finish consistently you do want to be looking higher than that every now and again.

I think the easiest way to stop this kind of thinking in the Arsenal team is to try and stop them comparing everything to Spurs. Compare yourselves to the other big teams, Chelsea, City and, when they return, United. This would start to make people realise that you have to look higher if you want to succeed, not lower.

I know it seems like a little thing but I do have to say it’s got to a point where something needs to be said to the players, because our mentality in regards to winning games has to change. We have to return to the swagger of the Invincibles, that belief that playing our best would win us any match, not complacently passing the ball around just expecting teams to roll over and not being happy at scraping by each game.

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