Arsenal’s post-Fulham rehabilitation continued yesterday with a comfortable 3-0 win over Newcastle. Since that black day last week we’ve won two games, scored seven goals and kept two clean sheets. Not bad.
Of course you have to take the quality of the opposition into account, and both Twente and Newcastle are poor teams, but you can only beat what’s in front of you. We started very brightly. William Gallas somehow missing at the back post and Shay Given (who made three or four outstanding saves as he always does against us) kept out a low Kolo Toure shot.
The first goal came from the penalty spot. Adebayor’s cross was handled by N’Zogbia and Robin van Persie slammed home his first goal of the season. It was the Dutchman who got the second as well. Eboue broke forward from midfield, got into the box after swapping passes with Adebayor, he then played a crafty little back heel and van Persie lashed it home from close range.
The only trouble Newcastle caused us was the series of borderline challenges by Nicky Butt. One, where he raked his studs down the side of van Persie’s leg should have seen him booked at least. He got his just desserts later on though when his looping header hit the bar. In the meantime Almunia had been called into action a couple of times as Newcastle had a period of pressure but he was solid and made the stops.
Not long after Butt hit the bar we got the third. Nasri played it in the box to Adebayor who could have shot but saw Denilson’s run around the side of the defender, gave him the pass and Denilson finished to kill the game. Not long afterwards we might have had a fourth but van Persie’s shot hit the bar and he seemed to have his foot stamped on requiring him to be replaced. Fingers crossed it’s not as bad as they seem to think it is.
There was some fun late on when scumbag convict Joey Barton was brought on. His first action was a crunching, and quite fair, tackle on Samir Nasri, but it was physical. Nasri then sparked outrage from Kevin Keegan for an off the ball challenge on Barton which he got all out of proportion. Just to let the scumbag convict know he wasn’t going to take the crunching tackle, he gave his ankles a little tap and sent him flying. It hardly merited the ranting from Keegan but then I suppose if you’ll pick someone like scumbag convict in your team then your sense of right and wrong is a little skewed anyway. As all this went on the Newcastle owner, his belly wobbling in the late summer sunshine, slugged back pints of beer in his replica shirt. A classy lot, no doubt about it. Anyway, the point is Nasri won’t be bullied and is verging on awesome already.
So another three points and, as I said, a good response to what happened at Craven Cottage. Sometimes a team does need a slap in the face to wake them up and that’s what they got last week. I thought the performances and the commitment were so much better. Obviously the return of Fabregas helps us play better football, but van Persie was more involved, Adebayor ran his socks off and had a very good game, Eboue had some end product, Denilson got himself a goal and in Nasri I think we’ve found ourselves a player. He always looks dangerous, he’s so confident on the ball (one turn leaving three or four Newcastle players looking the other way was just classic), and he’s giving our left hand side that attacking threat we’ve really missed since Pires left.
Afterwards the manager said the improvement came from a change of attitude and also spoke about new signings, saying:
We are trying to buy but the problem is availability, as well as the fact we have to find players better or as good as the ones we have.
With the players now away on international duty for the best part of two weeks – our next game is away to Blackburn on Sat 13th – the boss has time in the next couple of days to do that. Anyway, it’s good to go into that break on the back of a much improved performance and three points.
Looking around the Sunday newspapers there are a couple of things. The People links us with a loan move for Real Madrid’s Christoph Metzelder. He certainly has a beard worthy of the Arsenal. Meanwhile the Sunday Mirror says West Ham are ready to pay £8m for Johan Djourou to replace Anton Ferdinand who has gone to Sunderland.
The deadline is tomorrow night at 11.59. What’s the bets if we sign anyone it’ll be at 11.58:47?
Other than that I am now blogging this at you from my new house. Moving yesterday was hard, hard work and I celebrated with some Thai food, a load of beers and about three bottles of wine. As you might imagine my head is saying *boilk* but my stomach is saying something much more gurgly than that.
Thanks to Tom for filling in yesterday. A slight breakdown in communication meant he forgot all about it but nevertheless he came up with the goods. Next time I’m going to send him a message via carrier pigeon. Nobody can ignore a pigeon with a message.
Right then, have yourselves a good Sunday. More tomorrow.
