vs Manchester United at The Grove
F*ckin’ Get In!!! Well well well…Saturday was a nice surprise. And before I start just let me say if it wasn’t for Bendtner up front we may have been celebrating the biggest win over United for years and years and years. He was bad, so SO bad…he was indecisive, he lacked composure, lacked vision, and towards the end he even gave up chasing the ball and putting pressure on the defence which had been his only positive all game…and that’s all im gonna say on Nicklas..quite simply awful....
Now, don’t get me wrong, we should be thankful to United for being so wasteful, we didn’t dominate or anything, but when we had the ball we were fantastic. When we didn’t have it we were much improved, and despite a few occasions it being glaringly obvious we lacked someone to sit infront of the defence on the whole we defended well as a unit. Obviously Nasri was the stand out player, and he just produced what he has been building up to already in his impressive early days as an Arsenal player. The goals from the midfield that we lacked last season maybe? Fabregas was creative and worked hard to not forget his defensive duties. Walcott batteld away and his most memorable moment - a superb slide tackle on Patrice Evra - was unfortunately followed up by giving the ball away and letting Anderson through to have a shot at Almunia’s goal. Speaking of Almunia, he did ok, but when Fabianski came on with time running out, when we needed to keep the confidence that we could hold on the youngster made at least 2 superb catches to kill the attack when you feel that Manuel may have chosen to punch and the pressure would have still been on. The defence worked well together for the first time and it was probably Silvestre’s best defensive performance since he moved from Utd. I thought that my conspiracy theory had been right after a few seconds when he played a criminally short back pass to Almunia who’s bleached brain cells didn’t have the capacity to remember the back pass rule and picked it up at Rooney’s feet. Fortunately we got away with it and Silvestre worked hard to make it up. Gallas was pretty solid and actually got caught on camera a couple of times doing leadershippy type things, could have been my imagination though….
This match was different to matches we have struggled in recently and really sums up why we tend to be ok against teams that we aren’t expected to beat and struggle against the underdogs. United like to play football. They come at you and that allowed us to play our own game. We struggle when teams set up to just snuff us out and that’s the problem that we need to work on solving if we are to make ourselves title contenders. That plan B that gives us the cutting edge. The other thing is the ability to kill games off, such as on Saturday when United were throwing everything forward and with a bit more composure we could have created several goals on the counter attack. We need to make sure we finish our chances and make sure we take the chance to make chances when it arrives….
So overall a good performance topped off by a fantastic second goal for Nasri which showed all the teams positives - we were patient in the build up, we switched it around, the movement off the ball was good, the passing was precist, we made the space and for once the finish was emphatic! Superb goal. Just a mention to Rafael Da Silva who looked good for United, and continued the Premiership’s trend of scoring wonder goals against us. My prediction of goal of the season featuring all the goals being against Arsenal is still on.
And so to Wigan…Stick with the kids Arsene…D3