So Tony’s return was met with that most classic of scorelines: 1-0 to the Arsenal.
It wasn’t easy watching, we struggled at times against a resilient Portsmouth side, but the important thing yesterday was the result, not the performance. Frankly, there’s little point in dissecting how we played because this is a team whose limitations we know already.
Let’s look instead at the positives. Firstly, the result and the fact that the team kept plugging away. David James had been a bit flappy throughout and when in the 80th minute Denilson curled in a lovely free kick he came, flapped and allowed William Gallas to head home the only goal of the game. It was a simple enough header but fair play to Gallas, he was in the right place at the right time.
And despite how well Portsmouth defended we did have other chances. Adebayor was put clean through by Diaby and only some fantastic last minute defending from Distin prevented us scoring in the first half. Then, after another James flap, Adebayor was unmarked at the back post but thwacked his shot wide. It was an awful miss but then perhaps there’s something about Portsmouth, he has quite a history of awful misses against them.
Nicklas Bendtner played in Samir Nasri in the second half but his shot was easily saved by David James. So we did have other chances and at the other end I don’t remember Almunia having a save to make although Crouch hit the post with a header in the first half.
So the unbeaten run stretches to 6 and afterwards the manager said:
It was important to get the three points today. We were intelligent, mature and we didn’t make mistakes. In the end we won the game against a Portsmouth side who defended very deep and very well. I believe that, in the end, it was difficult to create chances but we had one or two good chances that got us the win.
And while we’d all have loved to see some typically Arsenal flowing football I think we have to be a bit more realistic with our expectations in terms of performance. We’ve got lots of players missing and when you’re playing Bendtner on the left then pace and trickery down the flanks is hardly likely to be the order of the day. The important thing was that we didn’t give up and that’s the way I’m going to look at it.
If you look at the league this season you can see all the so-called big teams have days like this. United have recently beaten Stoke and Sunderland with goals coming right at the death so we’re not alone in that regard.
So we go back into the top four, for the moment at least, as Villa play at Hull on Tuesday night and we’ll all be hoping O’Neill’s men find themselves mauled by the Tigers who will be determined to perform at home after their atrocious showing the other day. Fingers crossed.
With the next league game not until next year (a home game against Bolton) and the FA Cup game against Plymouth next on the horizon on January 3rd all the talk is going to be of the transfer window. Already names are being bandied around like nobody’s business with everybody trying to out exclusive everyone else without having the first clue who we might buy.
In yesterday’s match programme (which I was trying to find without success on the official site – can anyone help me out there?) the manager spoke about transfers, saying:
If we do buy I think what we need is maybe someone with a bit of experience. We already have many young players so, if we buy, it will be somebody who is ready to play straight away.
He hinted at a need for a creative midfielder with the absences of Cesc, Theo and Rosicky and Andrei Arshavin is someone who is obviously on the agenda. However, while I fully understand the need to replace the creative element of the team I hope he’s looking at other players too. A central midfielder with a more defensive mindset and hopefully a central defender too. We know from this summer, as Alex Fynn revealed on the Arsecast a few weeks ago, this was an area the manager was particularly concerned about and judging by performances this season he still should be.
Anyway, we’ll just have to wait and see. January is like a little summer, months of frenzied speculation and Newsnow refreshing in just 31 fun-packed days. It’s obviously a hugely important transfer window for the manager and for the club but it’s too early at the moment to get that worried about it. When you see stories like yesterday’s in the News of the World (linking us to Given, Taylor and N’Zogbia at Newcastle) you know the tabloids have got their creative writing teams going full blast already.
Right, until tomorrow.
