Written by George Sezer Tuesday, 14 December 2010 00:16

GunnerTalk Blog

By George Sezer

I usually take notes during the game before writing a blog and as usual I had my pen and paper in front of me. Half way through the first half Linds pointed out that I had only written one sentence; ‘shaky start   from our rookie goalkeeper Szczesny in the first 15 minutes of a very cagy game’. My initial reaction of disappointment for not being able to find any highlights to write about turned into thoughts of ‘hey this is not bad, we are playing away to Man U and nothing is happening, that can only be good for my team’, until Clichy had one of his famous lapses and backed all the way to our 18 yards before trying to put any sort of challenge on Nany. The ball deflected off his toe and span towards Park from the United’s winger attempted cross. At this point there was no real danger as the ball was travelling behind the Korean international but he somehow managed to get his head to it and the ball freakishly looped over our keeper for their goal in the 40th munite.

This was the highlight (or lowlight) of the first half apart from Nany missing the target with a volley from Squillachi’s poor clearance. Both teams were playing below par, with some very bad individual performances. I don’t give a damn about their bad performers but from Arsenal, I thought Song had another game to forget, I hope he goes back to basics and start performing as he did last year. Clichy: Whatever happened to the left back we used to watch and adore few years back? He looks like an accident waiting to happen, I know he doesn’t get much help from Arshavin and gets exposed often and the two centre backs making their debuts in the premiership this season, but still some of the lapses he shows are unexplainable and inexcusable. I also think that the Russian needs a spell outside the team to maybe trigger some of the magic we all know he has in him, especially with Walcott waiting on the wings like a vulture ready to pounce.

Second half we tried to force proceedings but you always got the feeling that it was just not happening. Our first real opening came after Szczesny did very well to block from Anderson when he was put through; Nasri, having an unusually quiet game wiggled pass Ferdinand before driving a low cross field shot which Van der Sar palmed away to Chamakh’s path but our centre forward was slow to react and that gave Vidic the opportunity to block his goal bound shot.

And that was that, the rest of the game fizzled away as we tried but their defence demonstrated how to defend a slender lead and they looked dangerous on the break; Chesny doing well to save an attempted lob from Rooney. They even had a luxury of missing a penalty by the same player although the decision to give that spot kick was beyond a joke as Clichy would have had do cut his arm off with a hacksaw to be able to avoid the ball hitting it as he tried to balance his body on it.

That brings me to the subject of the referee: I would be here all night if I was to go through the biased decisions he made all through the game. The free kicks, corners, penalty decision, anything 50/50 (or even 70/30) went their way. He booked 4 of our players but somehow managed to miss Ferdinand’s Kung Fu kick on Sagna’s chest, he didn’t even award a free kick for it!

This game had a 0-0 draw written all over it but we managed lose it 1-0 and unless we learn how to keep clean sheets in games like these we will not win this League.