Lucky Arsenal? Never. But I’m going out to buy a lotto ticket. They say that good teams have to find ways to win games they don’t deserve; to eek out points. I think we’ve managed to tick that box. What an amazing outcome today. I feel slightly sorry for Burnley. They did not come and put up two defensive lines the way other teams have. Though maybe they should have. And don’t tell me the Premier League is boring and predictable either. This was a fascinating game where the referee was the deciding factor.
We started slowly and feared it would be like some of the previous games where we just decide to play one half. But after about 20 minutes we started to turn up the heat and through both half’s we had long periods of sustained pressure. We squeezed them into the final third and kept trying to kind delicate ways the thread the ball through. After all the heroics of previous weeks it was inevitable that Giroud would not be able to find the net. Alexis tried hard, as ever, but did not have his magic boots on. So it took a Mustafa delicate header for us to take the lead. It was deserved. We dominated and, as expected, speed up our ball movement in the second half. Also deserved was the red card. This was the perfect encapsulation, within a 10 second period, of the worst aspects of Chaka. A careless, simple, misplaced pass right to their player and immediately followed by a rash two-footed challenge. Their nameless player made a big deal and it was classic Jon Moss to give the inevitable red. It was, in truth, borderline. It was two footed but Chaka barely left the ground and hardly touched the guy. But you can’t go in for challenges like that. It was unnecessary and reckless. Just plain poor judgement. And, you’d have thought by now, he’d have realized that tackles like that get you sent off.
In case you don’t remember, I’m not a great fan of our midfield pairing. But hopefully we can appeal the red-card and get it transferred over to Ramsey in agreement for an increased suspension to 10 games. We loose Chaka for 4 games now. Without Carzola and Eleny we can’t handle any more injuries and we will miss Chaka against Chelski. I was hoping Ramsey would pick up his thigh injury before that. But now I’m not sure who we’d be able to play in that pairing. At least we get our Coq back into the team on a regular basis. But the balance with Ramsey and Chaka is not right. I feel like i same the same thing each week with these two. The movement is too slow and predictable. They don’t drop off to take the ball off the defense. And then you end up with Mustafa giving the ball away too easily. Against teams like Burnley you can get away with it. But this season depends on the games against the top 6 – and against them, you can’t make mistakes like this (though I fear we will).
Ozil worked really hard today. He dropped deeper to pick up the ball. And all the good developments flowed through him. Giroud was off his game. And Ob1 came more into the game as it progressed. Unfortunately he’s part of the problem. When he’s playing out on the right wing we loose our width and shape. He wanders all over the pitch – which is where he starts the shine. This means our balance is off but he has more ways to open up the other team than, say, a Ramsey does. To be fair to Ramsey (which is a painful thing to do), both he and Ob1 would look like superior players if they played in that Ozil position. Ramsey does take up good positions in the opposition box – he just can’t find ways to actually hit the target. BTW, did I mention that his initial passes in the first half were awful. I wonder whether he’s our Jordan Henderson. I watched Henderson on Saturday. He was, as ever, truly boring and awful. It makes so much sense that England always pick him. All his passes went astray. And he’s always passing sideways and backwards. Sound familiar? I’d take AR8 over mechanical Henderson anytime though.
What a result today. Pre the sending off I thought we had the three points in the bag. And then Jon Moss intervenes. It’s not clear he got too much wrong. It’s just that he’s so fat and annoying to watch. And I can’t believe he gave us that (off-side) penalty with seconds to go. And then, without Carzola, to have Alexis take the penalty. You just knew it would be a dinky shot. If their goalie had watched his previous attempts he’d have just stood still. Anyway, at some point you have to give some credit to the team attitude and mentality. But how often can you dig yourself out of these wholes before you eventually fall into them?
With nearly everyone else dropping points this was a very good weekend for us. I don’t have aspirations of winning the league. Remaining in the top 4 has to be our objective. And before the usual wankers complain that that’s not good enough they should ask Chelski, Liverpool and ManU whether that would have been good enough for them last year and whether it will be this year. The competition is fierce and this will, as I’ve said, all depend on the head-to-head games.
– LB7