Arsenation

Yesterday evening turned out to be quite a successful one after a nail biting 83 minutes at Goodison Park. Having not seen the game I can’t deliver a full detail match report, but from what I gather via match of the day, it was a very solid performance at the back. The Verminator deservedly put us ahead after a dominant performance from the off, a great ball, curled in from a corner, combined with some great movement in the box proved too much for the Everton defence to handle. After that I gather we played at a reasonable tempo for much of the half, scuppering a handful of chances that should have gone in. There was also an Everton goal wrongly disallowed for offside and the officials had a nightmare. In the last 15 minutes Everton woke up and started to come into the game but we held them off until half time.

The half time team talk had clearly revitalised the Everton camp as they held a lot of the ball and made it difficult for us to play our own football after the break. It did sound as if we held on a little towards the end but were denied a clear penalty when Drente hooked Rosicky’s foot away in the box. That’s football though, I think it evens it out after the disallowed goal, but it’s a shame to see such inadequate officiating. Van Persie spoke before the game about how we may have to ‘win ugly’ and we certainly managed that yesterday!

With Tottenham slipping up at home to Stoke, the hard fought win let us overtake our north London rivals, and open up a slender one point gap with nine games to go.

Arsene spoke post game about how he would have preferred it if we had killed the game off by scoring a second, but expressed his happiness with the end result.

“I thought that if we scored the second goal then maybe, we could [have] given a psychological blow to Everton. We had a brilliant start and slowly Everton came back into the game after about 30 minutes, we could feel that in the last 15 minutes of the first-half.

“Second-half, for the most we did hang on, until the last 15 minutes we started to create chances again, but it was all Everton. We were resilient, focused with a great desire to defend and our defence played very well tonight.

What he says about the defence is right, they had an extremely solid match last night and I though Verm and Kos combined very effectively. It is also a massive boost to have two first choice full backs in place, they offer much more of an attacking threat than centre halves. It does pose the question, is Vertonghen necessary? There has been an interesting debate online about the difficulty of keeping four centre halves happy, when all want to play. This will be a very difficult decision for Arsene Wenger to make over the summer.

Aaron Ramsey has spoken about how our desire to beat the Spuds to 3^rd place shows in the performances and our current form. He is quoted in the Mail saying:

The results went our way,’ Ramsey told Arsenal Player. ‘We carried on our good form and I hope we can keep it up until the end of the season. 

We have proved what we can do and how motivated we are to finish third. We are doing that at the moment, hopefully we can keep going.’

‘It was great. We battled well and it came off. It was always going to be a tough place to come but we dealt with it well. 

It is clear that the team show the desire to finish in that important 3^rd spot, I think the Arsenal players have smelt blood, and are going in to seize their prey as they march up the table above the Spuds. Anyway, enjoy the rest of your week until we play Villa on Saturday, and enjoy the sweet taste of 3^rd in the Premier league.

Till next time

AN

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