Life and its moments

Honestly....and some of you may be surprised, or mired in disbelief....one of the best moments of my life (really) was Jens Lehmann stopping Riquelme's penalty for Villareal in the Champions League Semi-Final to propel Arsenal through to the Final in Paris. It was, dare I say, orgasmic. I leapt. I shuddered. I shrieked. I cried.

And I'm quite certain I'm not the only one.

So now, in the face of so much uncertainty, I'm ready to welcome what is next to face the Arsenal in the Champions League (a competition that has been well documented at this point as a personal favourite).

And it's with that thought that I stumble upon this quote ...

The whole cast of this period in Arsenal's history, too, could have been different if Jens Lehmann had not been sent off after 18 minutes of a 2006 Champions League final in which they still led until Barcelona brought on the inspirational Henrik Larsson.

I quite enjoy Kevin McCarra. Really, I do. The writer for the Guardian provides quite a bit of quality reading, and their sportswriters do tend to harken back to the quality days of yesteryear that we so miss ... a little prose never hurt anyone ... but, Kevin, really, did you have to remind me of that?

Honestly.

You took me, in the span of less than a second, from one of my favourite memories, to one of my most desperate moments. A time when all I could do was turn my hands up and say, "what now?" You realize, don't you, that this is the situation, already, that most Arsenal supporters are faced with? All we can do is turn our palms up and plead to anyone we hope will answer, "please, don't you have a thought to spare?" Wow, am I struggling through desperate times or what? But truly, it's honest. As much as I've hyped Nasri, Clichy, Fabregas, Van Persie ... and soon Eduardo ... I still sit here wondering if we've got what it takes.

And all I can do is look back to the teams of just a few short years ago. The teams that made fans of Liverpool and United alike record and then save our matches because of the sheer beauty, only to watch them again and again and again. The teams that featured Bergkamp and Pires, Ljungberg and Keown, even Parlour and Edu. And now we walk slowly into each week with hesitancy, with the subtle pangs of regret, with the hope, or wish rather, that the manager will do something.