vs West Ham at Upton Park
TP has already blogged this week and the moment has passed really so I’m not going to go into great detail today about Sunday’s match just a brief recap.
We started off fairly well and kept the ball, patiently building up and gradually moving up the field. West Ham used there flexible 4-3-3 (4-5-1 if they take a good long look at them selves and stop pretending) to leave Cole stranded up front and park their other 9 outfield players around the edge of their box - taking it in turns to rush forward to close down and otherwise just holding firm and attempting to intercept passes when we tried to make our move. Very surprising tactics from a Gianfranco Zola team especially after all the talk about giving it a real go, but I guess our reputation goes before us and teams just feel threatened. To be honest for a long time it seemed as if it would turn into one of those days and the goal would just never arrive. The arrival of Adebayor was the turning point as described by TP in yesterdays blog (and indeed Diaby again showed promise) and yet to get those 2 on the field we replaced Nasri and Walcott who, bar Van Persie were the players who looked like they might make something happen. Strange one, but I guess it paid off so no-one needs to question it this time round. In the first half Rob Green was most definitely outside his box and despite Arsenal hating Andy Grays comments about the ‘assistant referee’ not being as fit as professional footballers and cant be expected to keep up as we attacked so quickly there isn’t any way what so ever that he needed to be parallel with the incident on this occasion. Bad decision, and Rob Green went on to have (as also noticed by Mr Wenger) his traditionally, exceptional performance against us. Had he have been dismissed at that moment in time I may well have been writing about a rather larger away win. I really worry about Silvestre at centre back, he just doesn’t seem to be all there, apart from that the defence looked ok. Midfield was lively as usual if maybe lacking a bit of inspiration on occasion, and RVP was doing his best to make the break through. Bendtner, oh dear, all the fairly decent-ish work that had been done over the last few weeks was undone via a performance where he couldn’t pass, his touch was awful…like really bad…even worse than usual, and I don’t even remember him shooting on target or getting in a position to give himself that opportunity. Yeah it was a good ball for Adebayor’s second but in reality I don’t think there is a player registered to Arsenal Football Club at any level that wouldn’t have been able to see that pass was on and hit the 75sq.m. area that it needed to land in to create the same opportunity…maybe Eboue but never mind. So anyway…we got the 2 goals, Cole showed his frustration at being stranded for the whole game by stupidly lunging in and although the tackle may not have been a red card offence the fact that he knew he couldn’t get the ball and it was out of pure frustration I think the ref was right to send him off. If players let emotions get to them like that and put the safety of fellow professionals at risk then they deserve to get sent off. Good decision….and so that is just about it…a clean sheet, 3 points, onwards to the visit of a reinvigorated Spurs…this one wont be easy…
A slightly wary D3….