A 1-0 win puts us in a good position going into next week’s second leg against Villarreal. Maybe there was the hope that we could finish things tonight but we came up against a well disciplined, highly professional team who have plenty of experience and never allowed us to play the kind of football which could really hurt them. Listening to the Sky commentators during and after the game you’d swear we’d just lost 1-0 to Halifax Town. Fucking wankers.
Our goal came just a few minutes before half time. We had a corner on our left, it was cleared and it came back to Thierry Henry who played a sweet ball into Hleb and his excellent left foot cross was nudged home by Kolo Toure. How vital that goal could be.
We got a bit lucky just after that when Kolo completely missed his header on the edge of the box the ball fell to Jose Mari and Gilberto’s lunge looked like a penalty – the only thing I’ll say is that the replay they show from the ref’s point of view shows the ball going the way it would have if Gilberto had got a touch on it. That could well turn out to be a massive decision as conceding an away goal would have made next week’s game much more difficult.
The other thing the ref might have considered is that it was Jose Mari who went down. I mentioned him here on Tuesday, saying “He is very light on his feet and by that I mean he’s a diving cunt. Our centre-halves should be warned.”
I think you all know what I mean now. He was shameless and that might just have played a part in the ref’s decision not to give the penalty. I have to mention the ref because I thought for the most part he did really well and didn’t fall for their antics although I lost count of how many last warnings their left back got and he didn’t get a card all night. Can’t say the same for the linesmen though as Henry had a good goal disallowed for offside in the first half and he was nowhere near off, and in the second half a Pires rebound was slotted home when the other linesman gave another generous offside to the Spaniards. But that’s continental football for you, they fall over, they break up play, they don’t allow you to get into your rhythm and Villarreal did that very well last night. Dispruptive without ever being really threatening.
There weren’t really clear cut chances in the second half, if Eboue’s final ball had been better on a number of occassions we might have threatened and right near the end an Henry header from a van Persie free kick looked to be landing at Bergkamp’s feet but for some last gasp defending.
Overall I’m happy with the win. Of course I would have liked a second goal but we weren’t playing mugs last night. They’re not in the semi-finals of the Champions League for nothing and they do not concede a lot of goals anyway. The important thing tonight was to win because it means in Spain they have to come looking for a goal which allows us to play on the break and a goal at the Madrigal will make life extremely difficult for them. As well as them not allowing us to play – and their playacting seemed to really get AW’s goat in the second half, he was fuming on the sidelines – you just felt there was a touch of nervousness about our performance. When the boss threw on Bergkamp and van Persie it was a signal that he wanted the second goal but we didn’t really commit men forward. Perhaps that was just sensible. Imagine a Dynamo Kiev style goal in the last couple of minutes for them? Yeah, horrible, so we have to praise the maturity of the team and their confidence that a one goal lead is enough to take to Spain.
I’m not going to get into too many individual performances but it was great to see Kolo score. He deserves it for the sheer effort he puts in and you can see he’s almost running on empty at the moment. Senderos was really good again, the back 4 in general did their job well as we came through with another clean sheet and Hleb impressed but as I said they just didn’t let us play so some credit to them for stifling us despite the fact they’re diving cunts.
Afterwards Thierry was happy enough – “It’s a big result because we didn’t concede a goal”, Kolo was his usual ebullient self after the game, saying “They are a really good side and we did really well tonight and I think the next one is really difficult. I’m really pleased with that goal and we deserved to win”, while Arsene Wenger said “I believe it is a good result but we will know after the second game. We wanted to score a second goal. Sometimes I felt we were too nervous and wanted to protect a clean sheet.”
Bottom line is this – we won the game, we’ve kept up our great defensive record, they have to come at us in Spain, we’ve got the pace to hurt them when they do, they don’t concede many but they don’t score many either and an away goal for us would mean they’d have to score three. We’re none of us over the moon but then we all realise the job is just half done and there’s another big game to come. With the boss promising to attack in Spain it makes for a mouth-watering, if slightly nerve-wracking, second leg.
With Blackburn losing last night it really means the race for 4th place is down to us and Sp*rs which makes Highbury’s last ever North London derby so important on Saturday. The boss has already said he’ll be ‘rotating’ after tonight’s efforts but previews of that can wait until tomorrow. For now let’s enjoy the win over Villarreal – a 1-0 to see off our favourite stadium! – make sure we know it’s job only 50% done and concentrate 100% on Saturday’s game.
Oh, and the squirrel was my man of the match.
