The highs and lows a team experiences during the course of a football season can be quite extraordinary.
However, it’s not just players and management that enjoy and suffer in varying measures.
Fans too are taken through the emotional rollercoaster and to cap it off they’re forced to pay for the privilege. Critics and journalists also endure periods of quiet satisfaction followed by raging humiliation as predictions, hypothesis and credibility get tossed aside like an empty packet of salt and vinegar crisps.
In the past two weeks the club that has done the best job in perplexing all around them has been Arsenal.
From the mind-numbing result at Newcastle where a four goal lead wasn’t safe, to the mind-bending comeback against the world’s greatest team, Barcelona and then the toe-stubbing embarrassment of being held by lowly Leyton Orient. Arsene Wenger has taken the craziest ride Magic Mountain has to offer and transported it to the Emirates Stadium. Get in, buckle up and hold on.
Now, it has been said that teams can learn more about themselves in losses than they do in wins. I believe that the St. James’ Park miracle, which blessed the Geordie Nation, may have also flicked a switch in the Gunners that has been almost six years in the making.
Look, teams mature at different speeds. Once Manchester United came out of Sir Alex Ferguson’s managerial womb and finally discovered how to win, they never stopped. Chelsea under Jose Mourinho was immediately a bullying teenager but Arsenal in their 15 years under Wenger have gone through various growing pains.
From title winning hard men to scared, confused boys, supporters of the North London club have seen it all. However, in all fairness, they’ve stuck with their manager’s vision when many others have doubted the wisdom of the Frenchman.
Yes, in my heart and brain he still needs a top class goalkeeper. Yes, he must sign a world-class center back and yes, a tiger for the middle of the park does seem like the most logical kind of player that should pull on the red shirt of Arsenal but Wenger has so far not bent to popular will.
So just what did the team learn after the Newcastle fiasco?
Well, I think that they learnt that you could be the best team on the day and still not win. I think that they learnt that with the belief of a passionate, roaring crowd anything is possible. I think that they learnt that they have to trust one another because that crazy result, more than any other over the last six years, could’ve sunk them like we’ve seen in the past to the Stokes and Birmingham’s of the world.
The result of this learning curve, and trust me not many of us saw it at the time, was there for all to see on Wednesday night when instead of being swept away by a Spanish tidal wave they looked each other in the eye and saw something different from each other.
How different, I don’t know yet. But I do know that Wenger himself may have got caught up in the exhilaration of victory as he has stated that his club could now push on to win an unthinkable quadruple.
For sure, I’d make room for the Carling Cup in the Emirates trophy cabinet as I’d be gobsmacked if they fell to Birmingham next weekend.
The FA Cup is still a possibility, however, I don’t see Arsenal winning at Old Trafford. I think a draw against Manchester United would be the best bet and then take them back down to London for a replay. A replay that is on top of another replay.
The Premier League title could well come down to an epic winner-take-all on April 30th against that same United side. There is a problem though, as United currently have their number and they only have one win in their last ten meetings against the Red Devils.
And then there is the return at the Nou Camp. Last season, they had the nerve to take the lead in the Catalan capital before Lionel Messi showed them exactly what a wild carnival ride really looks like. The Argentine destroyed them and made them look foolish but maybe Wenger has learned how to tame the untamable?
The odds makers say that the "Professor" is dreaming, that he’s a snake oil salesman. I’ll admit, I’ve bought his magical potions before and I’ve been cured and sickened with differing doses.
A quadruple is fanciful talk but thinking about it will make that emotional ride just a little more pleasurable.
Nick Webster is a senior writer for FoxSoccer.com covering the Barclay's Premier League and the English national team.
