I have to confess that I only saw the first 15 minutes of the game last night, and then just the goals via 101greatgoals.
It was still enough to see our first goal in 946 hours of football. Nicklas Bendtner trickling one home with his left foot to put us 1-0 up. I also saw West Brom’s equaliser, the first goal we’ve conceded in a long time too. A West Brom free kick in a dangerous position was made more dangerous by the fact Eboue broke away from the wall and the shot went through the wall right where he was supposed to be. 1-1.
But two further goals in the first half were enough to win the game. I mentioned West Brom’s weakness at defending set-pieces and we took advantage when Kolo Toure headed home an Arshavin free kick, then Kolo’s long ball sent Bendtner through and he slammed home his second of the night.
I can’t tell you much else in terms of the game or the performance. Feel free to tell me, the arses are open, but the main thing is that we scored goals and won the game. The gap between us and Aston Villa is now just three points and they play tonight as we know.
The game was decided in the first half where all the important facts happened. In the second half we controlled the game and created more chances that we didn’t take but I thought goals four and five were there to be taken.
Goals four and five? Imagine. After the last few weeks I’m happy enough with three. Let’s not to be too greedy here.
And two for Nicklas Bendtner who has come in for some criticism in recent months. Nevertheless, he’s now scored 10 11 goals this season so despite some admittedly dodgy performances and some poor misses he does get his share. The manager was happy for him too, saying:
He has shown tonight he has the talent to be an Arsenal player and he’s on the right path to mature. I liked his presence, his determined attitude and I thought the way he took people on showed he has improved a lot.
No doubt there are still things he needs to work on in his game but I hope those goals will give his confidence a boost and maybe reduce some of the stick he gets. He’s a 20 year old striker, there are very few 20 year old strikers in double figures for their top-flight clubs this season, I’d wager. Adebayor, one of our ‘senior’ strikers, has just 12, so that puts in perspective a little bit.
As I said though the main thing was the three points. That the win came with three goals is another positive, as is the fact we might have had more. Of course you can pick the bones out of any game and look for negatives but we’ve had enough of those over the last few weeks, right?
Now we’ve got a few days until our next game which is Burnley in the FA Cup and our next league fixture is Blackburn in 10 days time. Sandwiched between those two games is the 2nd leg of the Champions League tie against Roma.
It’s not unrealistic to think that by the time we play Blackburn we’ll have Walcott, Eduardo and Adebayor back in contention so the squad will have a good boost heading into the final stretch of the season.
So now we keep our fingers crossed that Man City can get a result against Villa tonight (albeit without Robinho or Craig Bellamy). If they do things will start to get really interesting.
Till tomorrow.
