Written by George Sezer Sunday, 02 January 2011 04:56

GunnerTalk Blog

By George Sezer

Obviously nobody has told Birmingham manager Alex McLeish that kicking Arsenal out of the park does not work anymore. Poor man had no other plan or tactics to combat a full flowing Arsenal “1^st choice” team and it backfired on him big time as the Gunners wiped the floor with them.

Birmingham’s intentions were clear early on when a nasty, late, studs showing lunge on our captain by their centre back Johnson, bringing back the horrible memories of that assault on Eduardo. A straight red card offence in anybody’s book but the man in the middle only produced a yellow, strangely. Luckily Fabregas came out of it without a serious injury and hopefully there won’t be any after effects.

Arsenal undeterred with their strong arm tactics, pressed on and we only had to wait until 13^th minute for our opener; RVP turned Dann easily and as he was trying to break clear he got pulled by the centre back, lost his balance and fell. A foul nothing more, nothing less; but the commentators just about stopped short of blaming the Dutchman for diving as they realised that it was in a very dangerous position, just outside-right of their 18 yard box, perfect for his left foot. He didn’t disappoint as he squeezed the free-kick through the space in their wall where Fabregas had just got out of the way and with the aid of a deflection the ball went in at the near post for his first Premiership goal of the season.

Fabianski pulled a good save from a Larsson free-kick and Johnson blazed his shot over the bar from a close range after we failed to deal with a high ball as Birmingham caused us one or two problems. They also had a penalty appeal turned down when the ball hit Van Persie’s arm as he tried to head the ball clear but the Dutch international should have scored when lovely play between Nasri and Fabregas had put him through with only the goal keeper to beat; unfortunately he decided to chip the goalkeeper but got it all wrong.

We started the second half very strongly and Wilshere should have scored when a great cross to far post by Walcott was cushioned back to him brilliantly by Nasri but the young midfielder side footed his volley over their bar.

Nasri looking lively again after his well deserved rest, broke from centre midfield position after receiving a pass from Fabregas, showed a clean pair of heals to chasing Birmingham defenders but Foster did very well to close him down and parry his attempted dink.

Same two players combined again in the 57^th minute with a 1-2-1; this time the Frenchman made no mistake and buried the ball into the net from 18 yards with an unstoppable shot.

The Magnificent Pair hadn’t finished yet and in the 65^th minute they made left hand side of Birmingham’s defence chasing shadows when they started a 2 men pass and move attack that ended with Fabregas having pop at their goal from a tight angle that forced Foster into a good save. When the ball went in off Johnson from the rebound, I thought ‘there is some sort of a justice in this world after all’

The 3 – 0 score line gave AW opportunity to rest his Young Guns for the last 15 minutes of the game and he replaced Walcott and Wilshere with Denilson and Arshavin.

I really wanted us to score even more after watching that nasty piece of work Bowyer stamp on Sagna’s knee when the right back was on the floor, what a horrible looking, cowardly bastard he is! He got away with it as the ref failed to take any action once again and still had a time to run his studs down at Sagna’s calf before being taken off by his manager.

We didn’t manage to score anymore goals from the host of chances we created from the remainder of the game but hey, a 3-0 away win, who’s complaining - and A RARE CLEAN SHEET!