As you might imagine I’m starting this morning with an enormous *boilk*.
There’s only one way to deal with a result like that and it’s to drink heavily. Well, there’s another way which involves a rampaging orgy of violence against anything in blue but experience has taught me that drinking is the best option.
So a disappointing day in the end after it had started so brightly. Despite Arsene’s team selection raising a few eyebrows pre-game I thought we began well, passed it around nicely and looked comfortable. The Wembley pitch raised comments in the pub early on, there was one moment at the start of the game when Theo was going down the right hand side and the ball was hopping and jumping like it was rolling over a series of speed bumps.
I think the manager was absolutely right to call it a ‘disaster’. A billion pound stadium with a pitch like that is nothing short of embarrassing. But while it deserves criticism the pitch was the same for both teams, something Arsene stressed, and can’t be used as any kind of excuse. Maybe it suited Chelsea a bit more as they like the ball in the air a bit more than we do but we didn’t lose because of it.
We might have been behind before we scored when Lukasz Fabianski made a carbon copy of the mistake last week against Wigan. With two defenders around Drogba he came miles out of his area to try and head it clear. Instead Drogba got their first, headed it goalwards and thankfully Kieran Gibbs made a carbon copy of his clearance against Wigan to prevent the goal. It was a danger sign from the Polish keeper. You hoped it would be a once off but he seemed rattled from the off and it would prove costly later on.
But after the early scare Theo Walcott opened the scoring when Adebayor played in the overlapping Gibbs down our left. His cross evaded all the Chelsea defenders and Theo sidefooted home with the help of a deflection off Cuntley Cunt’s hand. 1-0 Arsenal and I had hoped we might press Chelsea a bit more but the goal galvanised them.
Malouda had a shot from the right hand side which fizzed underneath Fabianski, more heart in mouth stuff from the goalkeeper and Chelsea began to boss the game a bit. We couldn’t get going at really. They equalised after about half an hour. A long ball over the top to a clearly offside Malouda saw Eboue show him inside onto his right foot but his finish beat Fabianski at the near post. Poor goalkeeping again.
We were rocking a bit and when Diaby was dispossessed in our area by Anelka we were lucky his shot came back off the post. Half time couldn’t come soon enough.
The second half really wasn’t much better from an Arsenal point of view. We huffed and puffed but could not get into the game at all. Diaby and Denilson, brought in to replace Nasri and Song, were nowhere near as effective as their counterparts were against Villarreal. When two of your central midfielders can’t do basic stuff like retain possession or make a simple pass then you’re always going to struggle.
Chelsea probably should have had a penalty when Sylvester handled the ball in the area, I don’t think anyone would have complained if it were given. At the same time we should have had a penalty when Malouda clearly shoved Cesc (I think) over as the ball was going out of play. Again the referee didn’t give it.
He seemed to give most everything Chelsea’s way in the second half. John Terry fell over his own feet and he gave a free kick against us. It certainly frustrated the Arsenal players and Denilson can count himself very, very lucky not to be given a red card after he pushed Martin Atkinson in the chest at the award of yet another Chelsea free kick.
Arshavin replaced van Persie on about 70 minutes, Bendtner came on for the ineffective Adebayor, and then Chelsea scored the winner. A hopeful punt up field from Lampard saw Sylvester out-muscled by Drogba. There’s no shame in that, he’s out-muscled practically every defender in Europe over the last few years, but Sylvester gave up and that’s unforgivable really. He just stopped.
Now, he might have seen the green streak of lightning that was Lukasz Fabianski coming out of his goal and thought ‘What the fuck is he doing out there?’, but he should have kept going. The goal was made as easy as pie for Drogba by Fabianski though. Why on earth he was out there is anyone’s guess. It was piss-poor goalkeeping and while you don’t want to point the finger of blame the reality is that he was culpable for both their goals.
All the same he’s a young and relatively inexperienced keeper, you have to hope he learns from this and learns quickly. Let’s not forget Almunia, who most fans would feel comfortable with now, was hardly Mr Reliable in his first years with the club. You might say we wouldn’t have lost with Almunia, as I did afterwards, but even if he were fit Almunia wouldn’t have played yesterday. Fabianski is the cup keeper.
Throwing on Nasri with five minutes to go did nothing and Chelsea won the game, then celebrated as if they’d won the cup. Dancing circles and spraying champagne – just a touch premature, I think. I hope.
Afterwards Arsene bemoaned the ‘cheap’ goals, saying:
The disappointment of the day is that we gave two cheap goals away, and in a game of that level it has a bad outcome, especially with seven minutes to go.
There’s more in the link about his thinking regarding to the line-up but I think he’ll feel he made a mistake with his team selection today. After his best ever game Song was ‘rested’. I know we have a lot of games coming up but he’s 21 years of age, not some aging veteran. Diaby and Denilson were poor replacements for he and Nasri and the big talking point was the fact he left Andrei Arshavin on the bench.
I’ve can only think he had a little knock, or he wanted to introduce him later in the game when his freshness might cause more problems to Chelsea’s heavy legs but when he came on he hardly got a kick. I know Arshavin updates his own personal website quite often, it’d be interesting to hear what he has to say about it, because whatever way you look at it the decision to leave him out was very strange.
I don’t think that the manager looked at the semi-final of the FA Cup and thought he’d prioritise the league game against Liverpool or anything like that.
I believe he put out a team he thought could win the game, mindful of our punishing schedule. He got it wrong, and maybe some of us wouldn’t have as much confidence in the players he chose yesterday, but I don’t hold any truck with the idea that the game wasn’t important enough for him to play his best players. I can understand him wanting to combat the physicality of Chelsea with Diaby but I’d have kept Song in the team alongside Cesc.
We did worry that our defensive absences might cause us problems going into this game. We looked at a very makeshift back four and bit our nails. It’s disappointing, but not that surprising, that the weaknesses there cost us the game.
All the same it’s water under the bridge now. Painful and all as it is we can’t dwell on it. I won’t lie, I thought the FA Cup was our best chance of silverware this season, but with it no longer an option we have to concentrate on the games ahead.
We’ve got a chance for revenge when we play Chelsea at home in the league but before that we have a whole host of games to get through. The task now for the manager is to get the players focussed and to put the disappointment behind them. There can be no feeling sorry for themselves. It’s gutting to get so close to the cup final but that’s football and it can be merciless at times.
If there’s any wallowing in self-pity then the rest of our season is going to implode. We have to react, dust ourselves off and move on. That doesn’t just include the players but the fans too. The feelgood factor going into this game was fantastic, there was great confidence and belief in the players. Two goalkeeping mistakes against Chelsea shouldn’t obliterate that either. The team is going to need the fans in the games ahead.
When legs get tired and the schedule starts to take its toll our support might just help, so let’s not get too carried away with the misery. Of course it’s poxy to lose, especially to those cunts, of course we can see how Arsene might have picked a different team, but there’s nothing we can do about it now. What’s important are the games ahead, starting with the Mugsmashers on Tuesday.
Till tomorrow.
