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Arsenal And Manchester City: Guts And Grit Could Lead To Glory
Arsenal showed guts and grit in their FA Cup semi-final win over Manchester City. They are uncharacteristic traits that could yet lead to glory.
Arsenal are thoroughly predictable. They play beautiful football. They score great goals. They champion technical quality, skill, vision, creativity. But they do so at the expense of defending. They are mentally weak. They fold under pressure. They come so close to winning, before snatching defeat amid a crumbling February.
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As they travelled to Wembley to take on Manchester City in the FA Cup semi-final, the narrative was set. They were a team short on confidence, caught in the midst of a storm, up against fluid, free-flowing opposition who could expose their mental and defensive shortcomings. Failure was imminent.
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Arsene Wenger has read the script before. He has even been accused of being the playwright. It was simply set in stone. Or that’s what we all thought. Not only did Arsenal beat City, they did so in a manner that is wholly uncharacteristic of them. When asked about the fashion of their victory, Wenger was lavish in the praise of his squad, heralding the spirit and the character of his players:
"“I’m very proud of the performance and the spirt we have shown. I believe we gave a good answer to people who questioned that. I felt it was a very tight game but overall I think we deserved to win the game. We went through a difficult period. I feel the players have shown great togetherness today and we gave the right answer.”"
This was not a vintage Arsenal win. They did not dazzle with scintillating attacking football. They did not mesmerise with incisive passing and relentless movement. They scored, in fact, thanks to a full-back playing wing-back and a bundled set piece in extra time. Where was this is the narrative of bottling and shortcomings?
Perhaps more than any other moment of the pulsating, enthralling semi-final, when Granit Xhaka, rather than simply trudge back to halfway line to hear from his manager after a draining 90 minutes before preparing himself for extra-time, turned to the fans and thrust both his arms in the air, receiving a spine-tingling, hair-raising roar from a crowd baying for blood, it was clear that this was set to be no normal Arsenal performance.
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Throughout their recent struggles, what has been especially infuriating has been the resignation of their defeats. No fight. No desire. No resilience. This could not have been further from the truth. This was a win thanks to grit and guts, two traits that could yet lead them to glory.