Written by Ben Harrington Tuesday, 01 November 2011 15:38

GunnerTalk Blog

By Ben Harrington

As I awoke on Saturday morning fresh from a few Friday night pints I was overcome with a bad feeling in my stomach. I didn’t think it was nerves as I’d felt confident about the game all week; it was in-fact the after effect of drinking dodgy beer in the local.

2 hours after first venturing to the chamber I was on my way, having missed the chance of a few pre-match liveners with Bill and Gav.

Of course due to my delay in leaving I was cutting it a bit fine, to the point I got to my seat just as the game was kicking off. The game itself didn’t take long to come alive with Cashley crossing for Donkey Torres; luckily the consistently imperious Koscielny was there to snuff out any danger.

Not long afterwards Theo twice showed what he can do on his day by presenting gilt edged opportunities for Gervinho and Van Persie, both were spurned, but seeing how easily we were cutting them open at this point I wasn’t overly concerned.

Then around the 15 minute mark Mata came up against a dozing Santos and easily found room for a cross which deflected off one of Lampard's many chins to give the Chavs the lead. Needless to say he got a few choice words from me as he celebrated in-front of the away support.

Soon after they were behind our backline again, thankfully Sturridge went for a Di Canio style finish and royally fluffed his lines. Despite this scare I felt we were still very much in the ascendancy and a few minutes before half time we were level, the superb Ramsey put Gervinho through on goal and he unselfishly squared for the skipper to slide into an empty net.

I was thinking now we could press on as Chelsea seemed there for the taking, but in typical Arsenal style we contrived to hand the initiative straight back to them, Fat Frank swung in a corner and a combination of Per sleeping and John Terry’s racist being dribbled the ball over the line.

I then left my seat to beat the beer queues to have a half time chin-wag with Bill, Gav and Greg, needless to say it was pretty much doom and gloom as the defensive frailties had overshadowed what was a good first half performance.

The half-time decipher of the action had spilled over to the point I missed RVP’s chance, but arrived back at my seat in time to see Rambo fire over.

The half time pint had woken me up to the point I re-discovered my voice which was lacking somewhat in the first half.

But that disappointment wasn’t to last long as Andre Santos burst forward and showed that his strengths may not lie in defence as he beat Cech at his near post to level matters. My voice was back with a bang and my good feeling I had during the week was re-surfacing.

Roughly 5 minutes after we came forward with menace again and Theo looked like he had done his usual of running into the back of defenders, but he got himself back-up and in a flash he ghosted past 2 static Chelsea defenders and rifled an unstoppable near post (again) shot past Cech. 3-2 up and delirium had ensued in the Shed end.

“Could this be the day?” I said to the gent standing next to me, “we need another goal” he said to me, I very much agreed after seeing each and every defensive fuck-up this season.

Then came the stroke of luck that has been missing in 2011, Chesney had a serious attack of the Almunia’s by rushing out of his goal and taking out Cashley, I thought the worst, as did everyone around me, but Chelsea’s 12^th man pulled the wrong card out of his pocket. Chesney only booked when it could and maybe should have been worse.

He redeemed himself with a superb save from Lampard’s resulting free-kick. Panic over for the time being…

After his Chesney reprieve the ref then failed to spot Lukaku wrestling Santos to the floor in a Stokey manner and Mata fired in an unstoppable strike past Chesney's grasp to level the game once again at 3-3.

At this point I would have been happy with a point, but with 5 minutes remaining on the clock ‘2011 twat of the year’ John Terry slipped over trying to retrieve a back-pass he was never getting to and Van Persie had a clean run in on goal, he rounded Cech with ease and slotted it into the empty net, cue delirium once again in the away section.

I was thinking to myself “Please hold on, please hold on, please hold on”

Not a chance, with Chelsea pressing for an equaliser a swift Arsenal counter attack ended with captain marvel drilling an unstoppable swerving drive past Cech, Van Persie had his Hat-trick and in turn made the game safe.

At the moment the ball hit the back of the net I had Greg jumping on my back and was roped into a giant gaggle of joyous Gooner's behind me. Amazing scenes.

The players knew how much this result meant to the fans and they all came over to celebrate with us and applaud another brilliant effort by the away fans.

What was needed after this was a nice cold pint, which we eventually had after Greg’s half marathon plod to a pub that was safe.

A couple more in Covent Square topped the day off superbly.

What a match, what a day, what a result.

See the highlights here…..