Match Review: Arsenal defensive display wins the game. What? No wait. Really?

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Ahhhh, top of the league feels good doesn’t it? After all the problems we’ve suffered domestically it was an absolute relief to see we could maintain consistency in Europe.

Forget the lack of glamour about the tie, read solid workman like performance for last night. We defended very well and in the main, made the Marseille attack look pretty impotent.

The game was so quiet, the main chances of the game came from 2 handballs. The first came from Carl Jenkinson when he caressed a through ball craftily with a deft hand, he was lucky to avoid the refs eye line.

Marseille responded with a not so obvious handball in the box from an Arteta corner, the looping header from Robin that was cleared from the line was the main concern, but on closer inspection, Diawara had swiped at the cross… obviously still scarred by how Arsenal had treated his cross bar happy cousin all those years ago.

The second half wasn’t any more exciting, one of the best moments from us was an excellent tackle from Koscielny on Lucho Gonzalez.

We lost the improving Carl Jenkinson on the hour mark with a knee injury, on rolled JD… (yeah, don’t pretend none of you face palmed).

The Swiss came on and showed why he’s the man to replace Cesc with a game changing intervention… well, after Rambo and Gervinho joined the party. JD smashed a speculative ball into the box on 92 minutes, Gervinho kind of deflected the angle of the ball which allowed it to find Ramsey, he bore down on goal and found the inside of the near post with a low shot.

Superb! How satisfying was that? Ramsey might have his doubters, but one criticism you can’t lay at him is that he’s a bad finisher.

The ref blew up and we’d nicked a win by defending well and taking out chances. The victory felt good, but for alien reasons.

Conclusion…

I sometimes wonder whether a last gasp win like that gives you more belief than a flat win you took in the first 15? That extra lift the team takes from snatching a game at the death is exactly what we need heading into a big, big game on Sunday.

Did you notice the jubilation from the boys after? I can’t help but think that is the influence of a passionate captain. We have to kick on now and start stringing consistent results together. The two centre backs have to be proud of themselves and keep that level of concentration as a standard for the season. The mix of attributes between Koscielny and Mertesacker covers off most problems you’re likely to face in a game. The big German deals with aerial issues and is a reassuring asset from set pieces, the Frenchman has the recovery pace to catch most attackers and his ground defence is impressive. The keeper has to keep on doing what he’s doing and Song has to make sure he maintains his discipline and continues to protect the back four.

Our lack of midfield spark still worries me, we haven’t been creating chances at the frequency you’d expect of a team that constantly talks about the attacking style they play. I can’t see how that’ll change either, we lack decisive creative flair at the moment. We either need to give Benayoun a run in the side and see what he’s all about or we need to try something a bit more radical, like playing Arshavin in the middle. He’s not a work horse, but if you can put workhorses around him, he can feed Robin and the widemen all day long.

He was our most creative influence last year with 18 odd assists / 12 goals and I can’t help but think his talent and vision is totally wasted out wide. If his performances tell us anything, it’s that he doesn’t like where he’s playing. Give him some motivation, give him a chance to exercise his skill and set the team up around him while we’re waiting for Jack to return. Robin isn’t getting the service his form deserves and we’ve given Arteta, Rosicky, Rambo plenty of time to stake a claim and it hasn’t clicked.

Waiting for Jack to return in January at the earliest is a massive risk in my opinion, we need to start scoring now. One for the manager to ponder… but a potential solution is staring him right in the face.

A great win for the boys that leaves me looking forward to Sunday.

Today is Spursday, so kick back and enjoy watching our neighbours fight it out in the Champions League’s poorer, uglier, slightly smelly sister competition.

Alternatively, clip your toe nails or paint a fence…

P.S. I have spares for Sunday, enquire within.

524 Responses to “Match Review: Arsenal defensive display wins the game. What? No wait. Really?”

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  3. bade the gooner (bernard)

    IG

    He’s thick, he’s full of paradoxes and self contradictions, and he’ll support PSG next year…..

  13. Grassy Knoll

    No more criticism of Koscielny please.

    Remember – he closed down Messi when we beat Barcelona.

    Remember that?

  14. bade the gooner (bernard)

    Yes he can walk on water, he also can predict all the world lotto numbers, and he won’em all, and he’s the richest man ever…..

  17. Radio Raheem

    It would have been more fun of he had done it 60 feet in the air. Some French man does stuff like that no?

    Or should have buried himself alive (a Russian peasant tried that recently, albeit, tragically) or stay awake for days on end or swim the Thames eating all the shit along the way without falling ill or climb the Everest naked or sell a copy of a Denilson biography or…the point there are so many ways fro him to show he is more super than the rest of us not that lame shitting on water thingy he done

  25. Radio Raheem

    Ivory he’s okay but it feels like I’ve seen him a million times already…it’s kinda boring.

    I was referring to a French man that climbs high buildings, I mean really high ones…balances himself between two building that are probably a million feet high…I mean really daring stuff.

    I saw a video of a South African man who plays with a pack of lions in the wild. He is in the middle of ten or so lions and they just toss up and down. It’s crazy, I mean any one of those fuckers could fancy a bit of a snack at any time.

    How about that movie Hertzog released a few years ago with the man that mauled by grizzly bears?

    These crazy fuckers are worth watching not some greaseball giving a can of coke to a group of girls he’d like shag

  72. OPG

    Last season we beat Braga 6-0, Partizan 3-1 and Shahktar 5-1 that normally would have got us top spot in our group but then made changes for the next 2 tough away games @ Shaktar and Braga which lost us top of the group still we should get top in this group. The other groups are still close apart from the usual Barca and Madrid, Shakhtar who came top of our group last season only have 2 points atm..

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