Written by George Sezer Thursday, 24 February 2011 01:21

GunnerTalk Blog

By George Sezer

Arsenal is 1-0 up and few minutes to go for the final whistle. Nasri takes the ball towards the corner flag keeps it for a while, Arshavin joins him, two of the most skilful players in the premiership, combining and keeping the ball deep inside the Stoke’s half, running the time down.

No, neither I have lost it nor it was a dream.  This was for real and Simon hit the nail on the head when he stated in the Gunner shout “Really pleased with the 3 points! Game by game we are seeing Arsenal seeing out games, and that was very professional, sometimes that's needed!”

Apart from the 3 point seeing out a tight match was the most satisfying aspect of this game. We all know we can play great football and win matches but this game showed that we can win games without playing our irresistible brand of football too and it is a great weapon to have in our armoury, it might just make difference between winning the whole thing or not. Arsene Wenger acknowledged it by quoting after the game: 'We have matured; certainly, because we can win the game when we are less creative, less fluent... that is what has changed'

The way we started the game I thought it was going to be another great Arsenal performance with Walcott on fire in the opening stages. He hit the inside of the post when Fabregas found him with a lovely through pass inside the box after Wilshire’s mazy run open things up for us. Barely few minutes had passed when our Captain marvel was at it again when he lobbed a delicious ball onto Bendtler’s head. The Danish international, who was playing for the injured Van Persie, cushioned his header down for Walcott but this time the young forward sliced his shot wide.

In the 8^th minute Bendtler’s persistence won us a corner. Wilshere pinged the corner kick towards far post and guess who was there to side foot the ball back to 6 yard box for Squilacci to head in the only goal of the game; Bendtler.

We lost Fabregas to another hamstring injury shortly afterwards. We can only hope that he won’t miss the Cup Final on Sunday but it doesn’t look promising.  I really felt for him when he twitted; ‘I don’t know if I’ll make Sunday or not but all I know is that from this moment to Sunday 16'30 I won’t sleep if it’s necessary. I’ve waited too long to captain a final for arsenal and I won’t give up till the last second.’

Arsenal went into their shell after our Captain was replaced by Arshavin and Nasri moved into middle. We still had the lion share of the position and Nasri blasted a free kick narrowly wide.

Stoke had a couple of high balls played towards our goalie but they soon realized it was not Almunia they were dealing with. It was our new no1 dealt with their physical approach very well. He also made a great one handed save from a vicious long range afford from Carew.

Second half was more of the same, not much happening; Stoke City playing like Stoke City, Arsenal keeping the possession of the ball for long periods. Our defense looked very assured; our both full backs were very good and center pairing of Djourou and Squilacci was solid. It’s worth mentioning that Squilacci looks a decent defender every time he plays alongside Djourou... and he scored our winner!

Our only clear cut chance of the second half fell to Walcott; Nasri released impressive Arshavin on the left, the Russian delightfully avoided a sliding tackle before cutting a perfect ball for the English International but he scuffed his shot from 8 yards with Stoke goal at his mercy. Unfortunately Walcott left the pitch on a stretcher after spraining his ankle from a clumsy challenge from behind by Whitehead. He definitely misses the Sunday’s final. They did have one good chance too when, hate figure Showcross' header was deflected wide by Djourou.

Denilson replaced the injured winger and Chamakh came in for Bendtler in the closing stages as we closed in for the victory and the 3 points that takes us just 1 point behind the leaders.

Arsenal had just 10 shots in total in this game. It is the least amount of shots we have had in a game for more than a year and we still won. Has this team matured at last?