On a day when things went a bit crazy in the Premier League we went back to the top after a rather strange win against Everton.
We fell behind in the first half when Everton scored from a corner. It went to the back post, Nicklas Bendtner bounced the ball off his knee which set it up perfectly for Yakubu’s head or Cahill’s studs to make it 1-0 to the home side. And really the less said about the first half the better. It’s a long time since I’ve seen us play quite that poorly. There was no cohesion, no passing, and while the front two didn’t do a lot they weren’t helped by getting absolutely no service from the midfield.
So to go out in the second half and score 4 was a bit of a surprise. A very nice surprise. The first came when Eduardo latched onto a long ball which went over the head of Jagielka, controlled it, waited, then just dinked it past Tim Howard. The second was fantastic, Bendtner flicked on Clichy’s long ball (heh, long balls = goals, every way is the Arsenal way), Eduardo showed great strength to hold off Jagielka again before finishing superbly inside the near post. We’re beginning to see now why Arsene paid all that money. In front of goal he’s cooler than a polar bear who has just been given an ice-enema while standing at the North Pole with no fur on. Tremendous. Those were his first league goals for us and when you consider most people would agree he hasn’t had a dazzling start to his Arsenal career he’s still got 9 goals so far. Not bad.
Everton decided they’d fight fire with fire and began pumping long balls towards our defence which, for the most part we dealt with very well. Then as Adebayor was waiting on the sidelines to come on the man he was about to replace, Nicklas Bendtner, got himself a second yellow card for a crude challenge on Andrew Johnson. He was very lucky it wasn’t a straight red to be honest and it was a stupid, idiotic thing to do. But then young players often do stupid things, there are some parallels with Robin van Persie’s sending off at Southampton a few seasons back, and the measure of Bendtner will come when we see if he learns from it. I’d like to think he won’t make another tackle like that again though, it wasn’t nice to see at all.
Luckily the red card didn’t cost us and Adebayor, on for Eduardo then, made it 3-1 after a hilarious mix up between Howard and Yobo. As Adebayor chased down his own flick on the two Everton players dilly-dallied and he nipped in, stole the ball and put it into an empty net.
Everton then went down to ten men when Arteta (a player I like, I have to say) was sent off. Now, the game had been getting a bit tetchy, mostly because of the emnity between Cahill and Cesc who was sent off at Goodison a couple of years ago for attempting to strangle the Australian. Cesc and Arteta were running for the ball and Arteta caught him on the side of the face with a raised arm/elbow. To be honest I’m not sure there was a lot of intent there but he had been a bit reckless with his arms previously. There followed a bit of pushing and shoving and the red card for Arteta. Perhaps Cesc made a bit of a meal of it too, although I don’t suppose any one of their players would have done us the favour of staying upright and saying ‘Carry on, old chap’. And Moyes, to me at least, looks a little silly slagging off Cesc for his reaction after blatant dives by Yakubu and good old Phil Neville, which the ref saw clearly and left unpunished.
Cesc and Flamini (can we please give him a new deal? Like pretty please) picked up yellow cards for nothing much (Flamini’s 5th so he now misses the FA Cup tie against Burnley next Saturday) and Rosicky came on to protect a clearly fired-up Cesc from a second. And it was Rosicky, the master of the icing on the cake goal, who made it 4-1 with a very smart shot inside Howard’s near post after good work from Adebayor and Diaby had set him up. So with United losing earlier in the day to West Ham, who we have next on New Year’s day, we go back to the top of the league with a 2 point lead.
It is funny, isn’t it? After the Portsmouth game in midweek the reaction and bleating from some quarters was so over the top and yet here we are on top of the pile once again. No team has a divine right to win any game. Look at United, 1-0 up against West Ham, they then miss a penalty and end up losing 2-1. I swear you’d have to get armies of Samaritans at the ready if that happened to us, such is the hysteria surrounding any result which is considered less than perfect. Football is not an exact science, anyone can lose to anyone, and while it’s always good to talk I’m not sure some results and players really need the in-depth analysis all the time.
Afterwards Arsene paid tribute to his team that had to battle hard against an Everton side who made life very difficult for us. He said:
We battled. Last season here, Everton played a very physical game and they were very direct. And we lost. It was a great result for us, we showed we can battle, we have a great spirit and showed that we can cope with all kinds of challenges – that is always a sign of a very good side.
And once again we’ve managed to pull off a very decent result without playing particularly well. And that’s also the sign of a very good side. It’s clear our play is not as fluid as it has been but peaks and troughs are natural over the course of the season and if you can come through a trough winning or drawing most of your games then you’re doing all right. We’ll click again but let’s not forget the lads have played 9 games in December, that’s a lot of football so some tiredness and under-par performances are natural. So, top of the league at the turn of the year, the challenge now is to make sure we’re still there in May.
Right, looking around at the other stories the Mail is reporting that Arsenal will try and sign a striker in the transfer window on the back of news that Robin van Persie could be out for another three weeks. If it were true that would be a big blow, although not a huge surprise. We should send him to Lourdes.
Borrusia Dortmund are making no comment on the Jens Lehmann situation. When asked to comment their only comment was ‘no comment’ which doesn’t make it easy for me to comment so I won’t.
Arsene talks about Alan Shearer’s ‘stupid idea’, and leaving aside Shearer he does sum up the modern media perfectly.
And that’s it. I was expecting a bit more in the Sundays about transfers and all that but I can’t find anything. So I’ll leave you to enjoy being top once again, more tomorrow.
