Credits: The 42
I’m no avid fan or follower of betting tips or websites. Not because I’ve felt any hatred or prejudice against the ones who are, but that part of footballing culture has been too intimidating for me to explore. Organizations like bet365 and Paddy Power have always been too vague for me to participate in. It’s one side of football that is entirely gray to me. Maybe it’s because I’m not British (or because gambling is punishable from where I am), but I’ve always never gotten into the whole “betting culture.”
I still haven’t. But yesterday, more out of elation over Arsenal’s emphatic 4-1 win over Basel and subsequent topping of Group A in the Champions League, I surfed the Arsenal Internet more vigorously than I often do. From downloading Alexis Sanchez wallpapers to fawning over Rob Holding’s statistics, I stumbled upon a fanmade betting website, Betting Tips Plus.
The odds there startled me. Arsenal were listed as 20/1 by Bet on Brazil to go all the way to the final. Now normally, those are relatively astronomical odds, but the tipster site that recommended those spoke very highly of our players, including relatively bit-part ones like Holding or Iwobi . The feeling that another, more neutral website held the club in such high esteem surprised me so much, I was delighted. In the spirit of the moment, I think I can safely say that if you want to feel good about being a Gooner, I highly recommend you taking a look at their site.
Without wanting to divert from the topic or risk sounding like an advertiser, perhaps those excellent odds were a neat representation of how the outside footballing world perceives Arsenal at the present moment. On paper at least, we’re no longer a team that scrapes for fourth in the league and performs moderately in the group stages. We’ve finished runners-up last season and bettered our mainstream record in the group. All of our potential opponents are beatable – even Bayern Munich and Real Madrid, the probability of avoiding whom are 67%.
Not that we should rise up in arms against the lords of luck if Arsenal do face a difficult draw. That’s just part and parcel of a Champions League campaign, and it’s something every serious club contends with. It’s really about time we roll up our sleeves, show our utmost concentration and live up to the potential we know we have in the games that define the club’s season.
We’ve had good days against the big boys in Europe before, think of the two 2-0 wins over Bayern home and away, the nearly-achieved comeback against AC Milan and the 2-1 win over Barcelona in 2011. But when was the last time we played well against a top team over two legs and actually knocked out an A-list team? The example closest to home was the 2-0 win at San Siro in 2008, which was – when you factor all that has happened since then – an era ago.
A lot has changed since then – most notably the quality of our footballers – but I don’t think we’ve yet shaken away our innate vices of “bottling the big occasions,” for lack of a better phrase. It goes without saying that if this really is Wenger’s last season, and the penultimate year of Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez, nuances as such need to be repaired for a fairytale finish.
And make no mistake, the finish will be fairytale. I’ve made no hushed secret about of lack of confidence in Arsene Wenger’s leadership – heck, I’ve also have explicitly expressed my occasional hatred for the man as well. However, in the grand scheme of things, he is Arsenal’s longest serving manager and our most successful one. And while it’s painfully obvious he’s not half the manager he was, the Champions League has never looked more gettable than before. Barcelona are faltering, Bayern have faltered, Madrid are on a massive unbeaten run but still do have considerable chinks in their armour.
I get that it’s improbable, I get that it’s unrealistic, but that’s the stuff dreams are made of. The time is ripe enough for us to do something more than dangle our legs, and the world knows it. I may be displaying excessive naivety in saying this, but why else would the odds of Betting Tips Plus be so positive?
-Santi [Follow me on Twitter @ArsenalBlogz ]
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