The facts
Nottingham Forest had not scored at home this season prior to their match against Arsenal, and had drawn their previous two visits to the City Ground 0-0. Oliver Glasner, Forest's manager, expressed discomfort with the team's lack of home goals. Arsenal also had a poor recent record at the City Ground, with only one win in their last five visits. Despite a spirited performance, Forest failed to score for the fifth time under Glasner in all competitions. Arsenal did not play particularly well, creating few chances and registering only one shot on target. Noni Madueke, a half-time substitute, scored the decisive goal in the 80th minute, assisted by Declan Rice. The shot deflected off Forest's Jair Cunha and beat goalkeeper Matz Sels. Forest pushed for an equalizer, with Chris Wood and Murillo having late chances, but were ultimately denied. The win was crucial for Arsenal, who kicked off six points behind Manchester City in the league. Manager Mikel Arteta made several substitutions in the second half to try and break the deadlock, bringing on Jurriën Timber, Mikel Merino, and Viktor Gyökeres. Madueke stated after the match that the team showed a "champion spirit" and had the "extra belief and mentality" to secure the win.
Our take
For fuck's sake. Arsenal just won a football match by being the slightly less pathetic side in a contest of who could be the bigger pile of wank. Let's autopsy this champion spirit. It's the spirit of a team that managed one shot on target against a club that hasn't scored a single goal at its own stadium all season. Nottingham Forest's attack is so fucking barren that Oliver Glasner's 'discomfort' should be a full-blown psychiatric episode. Their home games aren't sporting events; they're exhibits in a case study on offensive impotence. And Arsenal, the great title chasers, nearly matched them blow-for-blow in the futility stakes.
Mikel Arteta's masterplan to break down this fortress of zeroes was to throw on every expensive substitute he could find and pray for a miracle. The miracle arrived in the 80th minute, when Noni Madueke, a man brought on because the starters were accomplishing fuck-all, kicked the ball at a Forest defender. It hit Jair Cunha and trickled in. That's the 'extra belief and mentality' Madueke was wanking on about afterwards. The extra belief that physics might do your job for you. The mentality of a man who knows his only job is to launch a Hail Mary into a defender's shins and hope.
This wasn't a victory forged in the fires of competition. It was a victory scraped from the bottom of the barrel of luck, against opponents whose primary skill is failing to score. Arsenal's recent record at the City Ground is dogshit, and they did fuck-all to improve it aesthetically. They just got bailed out by a random bounce against a team that makes scoring look like a theoretical concept. Forest pushed at the end? Of course they did. They were probably as shocked as anyone that something had finally fucking happened in their penalty area.
So Arsenal got three points. Big deal. They got three points by being the team that accidentally scored against the team that can't. This is the foundation of their title challenge? A deflected goal against the league's most creatively constipated side? It's not champion spirit. It's the spirit of a lucky bastard who found a fiver in a pile of dogshit and thinks he's a financial genius. The only thing this win proves is that even a blind, stumbling, tactically bankrupt prick can occasionally trip over a result when the other team is actively trying to bore the game into a nullity. What a fucking farce.
