Match report – By the numbers – Player ratings – Video
I said yesterday I’d have taken a draw from this game. At half-time I’d have paid good money, under the counter money, for somebody to make it happen through fair means or foul, but in the end I thought we deserved at least the point we got from that game.
The residual nervousness and lack of confidence after a difficult week was clearly evident in our first half performance. City were very much on top and although there was an element of good fortune to their goal – rebounds off the post rarely end up that cleanly at the right pair of feet – it’s hard to argue that they weren’t good value for their lead.
They were clearly playing with a conviction that we couldn’t muster. Our one attempt on goal to their seven showed how we struggled to trouble them from an attacking point of view, and they had plenty of joy down our left hand side until we shored things up.
Their goal had a familiar feel to it. Arsenal lose possession in the opposition half, they come steaming forward, catch us a bit cold and take advantage. It feels like this has become a ‘thing’ in recent months, and I do hope it’s something we’re going to work on because it’s proving very costly.
All we could muster in that first period was a Flamini effort rightly disallowed for offside, and a Rosicky tumble in the box, one of those where he anticipated contact which never came. A dive, I suppose you’d say. The referee didn’t buy it, but nor did he produce a yellow card. And for all City’s possession and elan, they didn’t create anything you’d really call clear cut.
After the break we seemed a different team though, much more in control of the game and the 53rd minute equaliser from Flamini just put us further on the front foot. It was a really well worked goal too. Giroud held it up in the corner, we worked it back into midfield, across to Podolski whose delivery from that left side is often so good, and although the Frenchman’s strike was hardly the cleanest of his career, it probably helped that it skidded up and in off the turf, leaving Joe Hart helpless.
That the goal came after we got a slice of luck at the other end isn’t lost on me, but after the week we’ve had I don’t think anyone can argue we didn’t deserve it. Szczesny got a hand to a low cross which saw the ball rebound off Mertesacker and go inches wide. It might have been another own goal nightmare, but Arsenal scored their goal a minute later. Fine margins.
Those margins were in play again when the ball broke for Lukas Podolski in the City box but his shot caught enough of Joe Hart’s heel on it’s way between the keeper’s legs to deflect wide. I had that moment where I couldn’t make sense of what happened, why wasn’t the ball in the net? Although we had to survive a scramble in our box, and a Fernandinho shot that was always going over, City never created a chance as good as that in the second half.
Pellegrini, knowing he has games in hand, seemed content to see out the draw, bringing on Javi Garcia, while Arsene went for the win putting on Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. We really pressed for that winner, but a combination of good City defending and a final ball that wasn’t quite good enough meant that it never came. In the end a draw seemed a fair result but there was more than points at stake today.
If we’d taken a thumping I don’t think too many people would have been surprised, but we had by far the best of the second half, and looked much more dangerous. The kind of game where you really wonder what might have been if we’d had the likes of Ramsey, Ozil and Walcott available to us.
And while our record away from home against the big sides is unhealthy, to say the least, at home we’ve beaten Liverpool (twice), Sp*rs, drawn with Chelsea, City and United (haha, force of habit), so it suggests there’s something more than a lack of quality in the team when it comes to analysing those poor away days. That’s not to say we can’t improve, of course we can, but days like yesterday show that even with a depleted squad we can compete and were, in some ways, unlucky not to nick the win.
Afterwards, Arsene said:
We have gone through a nightmare last week. Of course you could see with the 2-2 against Swansea that the team was on the floor and hugely disappointed because we conceded an own goal in the last minute. Despite that, we responded very well here. We will fight until the end. This team has qualities, it is has quality on the pitch and quality in attitude as well and it will do that until the end.
I wanted to see a response from the players yesterday after that awful week, and even though we started slowly, we got there in the end. Arsene Wenger always says that it’s the job of the team to rouse the crowd, but yesterday I think it worked the other way, the support, even at a goal down, went a long way to helping the team stay focused on the job at hand.
A team effort of a team effort, almost. The slow start wasn’t unexpected – it’s hard to feel confident after a last minute equaliser and after a 6-0 pasting when you’re playing probably the most effective attacking team in the league, and it would probably have been easier to go into our shells when 1-0 down so early. Instead, we dug in, got ourselves back into the game, and had a real go at them in the second half.
I wasn’t expecting us to be that good, so it makes it even more enjoyable to see that we’re not as dead and buried as some would have you believe. I think it was hugely important to play that well also, because another bad day at the office would have made snapping out of that funk even more difficult, and when our next two games are a trip to Everton and an FA Cup semi-final, it’s good that we’ve got something to build on.
All in all, a positive day.
