Match Reaction Norwich

[Kano]

There was a pretty clear expectation of us winning yesterday and you'd bet your bottom dollar had we slipped up everyone on here would have been saying we bottled it. Actually in the match thread which I went through earlier I'm pretty sure people were saying that at 1-0.

come on be fair, if it wasn't for us being given something instead of actually doing it ourselves (the pen) we would've fucked it up. we were good for 7 minutes yesterday only after being hand the initiative rather than earning it.

what i said was not a case of 100% either way. but if you look back over the past 7/8 years, you'll see we fuck up when things are in our grasp. sure, fourth place is one thing but take into the account all the cup mistakes then the pattern emerges. we can't handle expectation in most cases, we turn into a bag of nerves. put us on the back foot however and we can usually respond. being the leader and dealing with that pressure is completely different to gritting your teeth and fighting back.

your example of last season is the perfect example. came back from nowhere. then when 5 points ahead with five games to go, we fell apart and only because of some goalkeeping howlers clung onto fourth.

[Letters]

come on be fair, if it wasn't for us being given something instead of actually doing it ourselves (the pen) we would've fucked it up. we were good for 7 minutes yesterday only after being hand the initiative rather than earning it.

what i said was not a case of 100% either way. but if you look back over the past 7/8 years, you'll see we fuck up when things are in our grasp. sure, fourth place is one thing but take into the account all the cup mistakes then the pattern emerges. we can't handle expectation in most cases, we turn into a bag of nerves. put us on the back foot however and we can usually respond. being the leader and dealing with that pressure is completely different to gritting your teeth and fighting back.

your example of last season is the perfect example. came back from nowhere. then when 5 points ahead with five games to go, we fell apart and only because of some goalkeeping howlers clung onto fourth.

To be fair we should have had a penalty much earlier than we got one and the Norwich goal was from a free kick which shouldn't have been one. Things didn't exactly go for us till near the end although we didn't play well until we went 1-0 down.

I agree with a lot of what you've said about the way we handle pressure, or fail to, but some people's definition of a high pressure game seems to be entirely determined by whether we win or not. If we do it's all "there was no pressure on it, we're only going for a top 4 spot". If we slip up it's "typical Arsenal, can't handle the pressure when there's a chance to go top 4".

The run in will be interesting because we're now in a position where it's ours to lose which hasn't been the case all season.