Written by George Sezer Sunday, 26 September 2010 13:43

GunnerTalk Blog

By George Sezer

I watched Chelsea dropping points against Manchester City In the early kick off on Saturday and thought to myself we might be only 1 point behind the leaders tonight. That would be enough motivation for anybody let alone the players to go and do their best to achieve just that.  But the way Arsenal played it was like we had already won this game and closed the gap to 1 point.

They looked like they were there in body but not in mind and our keeper looked like he wasn’t there at all at times. It has become very boring talking about our goalkeeping situation, however all the Gunner supporters know it , media knows it,  even so called experts, pro or con Arsenal know it and worst of all I knew it for very, very long time (since Lehman left) that we NEED a goalkeeper – or two.  Nobody can convince me that Le boss doesn’t know it so here comes the 6 million dollar question; why has he not addressed this issue?? It cannot be the money, because better goalkeepers are not that expensive and the club just have announced record profits of millions, it is not his youth policy as Alumina is not exactly a spring chicken, we know he is a stubborn man but that can’t be the reason either.... or can it?

No team can play every game at their top form throughout a season, not even the Invincibles. When the form drops you need your goalkeeper to stand up and be counted and help you ride through the storms. In our case when we have a dip of form; our keepers make more mistakes than ever.  Yesterday’s game is a prime example of what I’m talking about; we could have won the game undeservedly, without playing so well, if we had a top class goalie keeping the goal. A top keeper makes couple of very important saves in a game like yesterdays to help his team through a difficult time not let in a terrible couple to make things even worse.

Although we didn’t play well we created good few chances. Eboue one of two changes from midweek’s game replacing Rocisky, produced an excellent cross to the back stick in the early stages of the game only for Arshavin to poke the ball against the post – twice. Another cross from the same player produced a header from Chamakh which was deflected wide.

A through ball from their midfield for Odemwingie caught out our centre backs square. Alumina rush out and foul the Nigerian forward in our 18yard box. The keeper made amends by saving the resulting penalty. This was as good as it got for our no1.

Thomas a thorn on our side all day skinned Sagna who had a poor game; his cross was tapped in for their opener in the 50^th minute as second half became Almunia Horror Show.

2 minutes after their first goal, a great back heal by their impressive midfielder Brunt released Jara down our left side, catching out Clichy who also had a poor game; their right back shot low and hard to near post where our keeper was standing. For some reason the Spanish keeper misjudged the flight of the ball which ended up in our net.

Eboue and Diaby were replaced by Wilshere, who was rested and Rosicky soon after their 2^nd goal to shake and wake up the team up but to no avail. The introduction of Vela in for Koscielny in the 66^th minute was one last desperate measure to salvage something from the game. But our Almunia saw to it that there was no come back with another disastrous piece of goalkeeping by getting caught in no man’s land for their decisive 3^rd goal. Former Arsenal trainee Jerome Thomas tapping the ball into an empty net was a sight for sore eyes.

Nasri by far the Arsenal’s best player never give up and tried to get us back into the game almost single handedly. He hit the bar from long range before scoring twice in the last minutes of the game.

For his first goal, a lovely drop of the shoulder which put Olsson on his back side was great piece of skill and his first touch in the area when he received a lovely ball from Arshavin was top class before scoring his second in the injury time . It was too little too late and too much of a margin to come back from.