Written by George Sezer Saturday, 27 November 2010 17:23

GunnerTalk Blog

By George Sezer

Isn’t it strange that we have one of the worst records away in Europe but in the Premiership we hold the best record on our travels? Same can be said for our home games but other way around, awesome in Europe but suspect in the league, interesting.

Rosicky replaced injured Fabregas and to my surprise Koscielny kept his place despite his clumsy displays last week. Arsenal living legend Pires started for Villa for the first time, it was nice to see him playing in the Premiership again all be it in a different shirt.

Arsenal started the game on the front foot and started creating chances almost straight away; first Fridel parried Chamakh’s little dink when the big forward was put through within 2 minutes then made a good save from Rocisky when a lovely flick from Chamakh put our vice captain through. The playmaker had already missed a great opening a couple of minutes earlier when he was put clear by a little slide ball from Wilshere.  

A couple of half chances went begging as we dominated the game. Their first and only chance of the half came in the 25^th minute as our customary failings from high balls and crosses were exposed once again, but luckily the bounce was not too kind for Ashley Young at the far post and he fluffed his shot. It would have been a travesty had they scored totally against the run of play but not surprising given the way the things are going against us this season.

It was not a great surprise when we finally scored the first goal in the 38^th minute, thanks to a mix up between their defenders that put Arshavin through down the right hand side. Looking very sharp, for a change, the little Russian cut inside and drove a hard shot to far bottom corner despite 3 defenders surrounding him and the best efforts of their keeper who had fingertips to it but couldn’t keep it out.

Arsenal should have been 2 up almost straight away when Arshavin found Nasri with a defence splitting pass but the French international missed the target from an angle after going round the keeper.

A great move released Sagna on the right who in turn produced an excellent cross for Chamakh but Fridel denied the big man’s powerful header with a wonderful, instinctive save. Fortunately even he couldn’t stop us going further ahead when Nasri buried an unstoppable shot after Arshavin pinned a corner at his right foot at the edge of the box just before the break.

2-0 to Arsenal, second half, no need to worry is there? Sky commentators kept reminding us how we lost the 2-0 lead last week and that Villa came back to beat us 3-2 from 2 down last time we played them away for umpteenth time and when they scored their first goal 6 minutes into second half, they were like ‘we told you so’ and I was like ‘please don’t let them be right’.

Their goal was a mixture of typical piece of bad defending and bad refereeing; another cross causing all sorts of problems for our defence. It was half cleared and fell for their midfielder turned defender Clark. In the meantime Carew was just getting back to his feet inside our six yard box and ended up standing right in front of our keeper; well I am sure you guessed it, the centre back, with Clichy deciding not to close him down for some reason, hit the ball like a centre forward from edge of the box, poor Fabianski trying to see the ball by bending left because of the big man standing in his point of view, just 2 yards away and ball ended up on his right top corner. It is not a rocket science to judge whether a man mountain standing in front of the goalkeeper is interfering with the play or not, but not a surprise with the standards of the refereeing in the EPL.

Hard to swallow after the performance of the ref in the midweek’s European tie, but our third goal made up for it and it was very nice to hear the way the Sky presenters eating a humble pie 4 minutes after their ‘I told you so’ happiness, thanks to Chamakh pouncing on to a lovely slipped ball from Rocisky and sliding the ball under Fridel.

 Although we let them score another one in the 70^th minute by not dealing with high balls yet again, I never thought we were in danger of letting this one slip. On the contrary we should have scored more before Wilshire’s clincher at the death with our counter attack play. But our inability to deal with high balls and crosses is still a major concern.