Let’s start with the good news and the 2-0 win last night means we’ve qualified for the knock-out stages and won our group. With games coming thick and fast the manager will have the luxury of being able to rest players for the trip to Greece in a couple of weeks time. I suspect we’ll see an almost Carling Cup selection for that one.
We played like a team that wanted to wrap things up quickly. On reflection the chances we had in the first half should, perhaps have led to a bigger scoreline. Samir Nasri chose to pass when a shot was a better option, surprising as he’s not afraid to have a go usually and tried his luck before and after. There was a bizarre sequence when the ball seemed to be cleared off the line about 4 or 5 times in a row from a corner, the last time saw Vermaelen’s rocket of a shot cannon off Arshavin’s head leaving the little Russian on the ground as if he’d been punched by Mike Tyson.
Some lovely play saw Arshavin take a shot on the run which went just wide and Arshavin, who was much busier than in pre-World Cup qualifying games, set up Cesc whose shot went even closer. When it came though the first goal was rather odd. We’d been playing with 9 men after Gallas and Arshavin had clashed heads. The Russian was having his head stapled shut while a clearly groggy Gallas was being reminded where he was, both of them off the pitch.
I think it was Vermaelen who played a long ball forward, the defender slipped and Nasri reacted brilliantly. His half-volleyed finish was absolute perfection and we went 1-0 up. Denilson, playing his first game since Man City away, got the second when he thumped one from about 30 yards. While you can look at the goalkeeper the ball took a weird swerve just as it reached him and flew into the net. Arsene said something about Brazilian ankles, which are obviously different to normal ankles, but it was 2-0 to Arsenal at half-time.
In the second it was really all about containment. There wasn’t the same urgency, the players knew that they could cruise it a bit and the second half performance was that of a team with an eye on Sunday’s game against Chelsea. Sylvester replaced Gallas whose right eye looked almost closed when he came back on in the first half and while I know he hasn’t played much and is probably a bit rusty – I don’t think he’ll have filled anyone with much confidence. Personally I would much prefer to see Senderos given the nod when we lose one of Gallas or Vermaelen but he’s so out of favour he’s not even making the squad these days, which is a shame.
And it would be silly not to point out that Standard, who really aren’t very good at all, had some good chances last night. They hit the woodwork twice, the bloke with the stupid spirally hair was clean through on goal from a set-piece (more awful organisation and defending) but cocked it up good and proper, while I thought they should have had a penalty in the first half when a post-head clash Gallas knocked their player over in the box. If that had been at the other end I’d have been fuming that we didn’t get. I know we had a claim via Eboue but for me that wasn’t a penalty. A better team would have punished us last night and Chelsea are a much better team than Standard Liege. We’ve got to defend a lot better than we did last night if we want to win on Sunday.
The biggest blow of the night came in the final couple of minutes. Kieran Gibbs tried a shot from the edge of the box and as their player came in to block the shot he caught Gibbs on the follow through – broken metatarsal. Bollocks. Of course I blame David Beckham. Until he broke his metatarsal pre-World Cup a few years back nobody apart from foot doctors/fetishists had ever even heard of metatarsals, let alone broken one. The bad news is that Gibbs is set to be out for 3 months and with Clichy out for another few weeks and Traore and Sylvester much less convincing options at left back it’s going to make life a bit more difficult in the weeks ahead.
It should also be noted that Gallas picked up an ankle injury as well as a swollen bonce so we’ve really got to keep our fingers crossed that he recovers ahead of Sunday. If I were the manager I’d be tempted to use one of Sagna or Eboue at left back but we can think about that more as the week progresses.
Arsene’s post-match reaction is here and the win will certainly help improve the mood and confidence before the Chelsea game. It’s the 10th successive season in which we’ve qualified for the knock-out stages and the manager is confident we can go further than last season, which would be nice. Still, with one more game in the group stage and the knock-out games not till after Christmas we can more or less put the Champions League on the back burner now.
Also, the manager revealed Alex Song had extended his contract, saying it would be confirmed officially soon and youngster Sanchez Watt has done exactly the same.
So there you go. Now we can get back to the meat and drink of the league and start preparing for what is a huge game this weekend. There’s plenty of time to preview that so I’ll just remind you that if you fancy winning a pair of tickets, courtesty of Emirates Airline, you’ve got until midnight tonight to enter the competition. See this post for all the details and the Random Number Generator will select a winner who will be announced on tomorrow morning’s blog.
Till then.
