Arsenal 2 West Ham 0 THE B-WORD IS seemingly off limits at Arsenal. Arsene Wenger was exasperated when his Friday conference became consumed by it and his worst fears were almost confirmed here when his players looked distracted for sizeable spells and might have been made to pay by a more ruthless team than West Ham.
Cue Cesc Fabregas. If anyone was going to bring it up, it was surely he. And after scoring the late penalty which sealed these three points, the Arsenal captain jumped in and did it.
“We are only thinking about Birmingham. Our first priority is Birmingham and that is the sign of champions, taking things game by game,” he said.
Fabregas did get around to Barcelona, however, the club Arsenal will face in a mouthwatering Champions League quarter-final, and the one currently casting long shadows over the red half of north London.
The Barcelona youth set-up was where it all started for him and two of his friends from those days, Lionel Messi and Gerard Pique, are now fixtures in Pep Guardiola’s team. Then there is Thierry Henry, the former Arsenal captain and another good friend.
“It is very exciting,” said Fabregas. “We are going to play against the best team in Europe, probably in the world. But we always go with the same mentality and that is to win.
“If you want to win the competition, you have to beat everyone who is coming. If we had been drawn against Bordeaux or Lyon, we would have taken it the same way.”
It is the Premier League trip to St Andrew’s on Saturday, however, which comes first and that is quickening the pulse of Fabregas and his team-mates. It was there two seasons ago that Arsenal’s title challenge started to unravel amid the catastrophic injury to Eduardo, but this time Wenger and his players sense a happier ending.
Only seven league games are left. If Arsenal can win them all, as they have their previous six and as they believe they can, then they would only need the merest of slips from Manchester United and Chelsea.
Wenger will be without both of his first-choice central defenders against Birmingham. Thomas Vermaelen is suspended, having been harshly dismissed for what was adjudged a professional foul on the West Ham striker Guillermo Franco – Manuel Almunia made a crucial save from the resultant 45th-minute Alessandro Diamanti penalty – and William Gallas remains a serious injury concern.
But given the seamless fashion in which Alex Song dropped back from midfield to deputise for Vermaelen, Wenger will not worry. He described Song as perhaps the most improved player in the Premier League.
“When we lost at home to Chelsea and Man United, and I must say it was in a convincing way, everybody got a little bit carried away and you have to go a bit overboard,” he said. “Nobody takes you seriously after that. But I believe we can go and win the next games. To have a chance, we absolutely have to win all of our games.”
Wenger paraphrased Rhett Butler when he was asked whether it would bother him, in the event of Arsenal winning the title, that they had failed to take a point from United or Chelsea.
“Frankly, no,” he said, as he pointed out that United had won last season’s championship with a haul of only five points from their encounters with the other three Champions League qualifiers.
“Yes, there is a point of view there but I tell you, I would still take the title.”
West Ham were left to lament not only Diamanti’s penalty miss but the way that, against 10 men, they went close to equalising Denilson’s low drive only once, when the substitute Carlton Cole hit a post on 78 minutes.
Guardian service
