Match Report – Player ratings – Video

So we’ve got a corner in the 29th minute and Joel Campbell takes it. The ball is headed away by a defender in the direction of Aaron Ramsey who is standing there smoking a Gitanes, adjusting his sunglasses and doing other stuff that people who are really cool do. He might be composing some beat poetry in his head:

I saw the most average minds of my generation destroyed by
niceness, starving #hysterical Podolski,
dragging themselves through the Arsenal streets at dawn
looking for a start in a dead Champions League rubber.

He looks up, sees the ball coming towards him, makes his shape even cooler (if that’s possible) and he throws a leg at it. He wiffles his foot in the general direction of the ball. People think he’s caught it on the half-volley but there’s nothing ‘half’ about this. It’s a full on, inches off the ground volley, using the pace of the ball to drive it back from whence it came – and that does not mean in the direction of Joel Campbell.

The contact is perfect. The ball streaks – and I mean literally streaks towards the top corner. It sheds its clothes, shouts ‘Wheeeeeeeee!’, and its leathery flappy bits shudder in the wind like a jowly dog with his head out of a fast moving car. The goalkeeper dives, but it is a futile exercise. The ball has left contrails in the air. It hits the back of the net with a thud, a crash, a bang, and a wallop.

Yaya Sanogo turns around and says ‘What in the name of all that is holy was that?. Flamini applauds vigorously, the way you would if you saw a parking attendant punish John Terry for parking in a disabled space.

Lukas Podolski has his hands on his head thinking ‘Shit, was I part of some kind of awful human experiment that I don’t remember and somehow they have transplanted my left foot, one which has been likened to Thor’s hammer, onto Rambo?’.

‘Good goal Ay-Ayron!’, shouts the returning Mathieu Debuchy, while at the other end Wojciech Szczesny doesn’t like to admit it but he got so excited a little bit of wee came out.

After the game, the Welshman is as effusive as ever, saying, “It was nice”, but later adding, “It was definitely my best goal ever of all time that I have ever scored until now and probably will be the best goal until I score one better than it but it’s possible that I never will but I hope I do because that would be quite nice.”

I mean, cor. What a goal. And look, I know this week has been pretty awful and everyone’s been miserable, but so much of football is about moments and Ramsey gave us a quality moment last night. No, this doesn’t solve all our problems, nor is anybody suggesting it does and, frankly, it’s a pain in the hole to have to even make this qualification but, you know, there’s always some miserable spanner who will say ‘Yeah, it was a good goal but we’re still shit’, and while that may be true do we have to hear it all the time?

This morning I am choosing to simply enjoy what was a sensational moment. The kind of goal that people should simply love because of its outrageous quality. 30 yards, wrong foot, nonchalant as you like, outstanding technique – it’s everything you want. And a bit more. And if you want a bit more than that you’re being greedy. Just soak it up, watch the GIFs again on the video page, find a HQ download, watch the reactions, and if you ever get bored of watching it then you might just be a little dead inside.

As for the rest, well, we can’t complain. Hang on, just need to qualify the fact that this was a ‘dead rubber’ against a ‘shit team’ and that this ‘doesn’t solve anything’, but in terms of a response to what happened at Stoke then it was just what we needed. I didn’t see it but from what I could gather from people on Twitter, the pre-game spiel on Sky was about how Arsenal, much changed and without so many players, were going to get another beating.

Instead Podolski did what he’s capable of and thunder-twatted us into the lead early on with a laser guided woofer into the top corner. The first half in particular saw a much more involved Podolski too, working hard, tracking back, and he won’t have done his case any harm with that kind of performance. I don’t think it’s enough to save his long-term bacon, but perhaps sufficient to convince the manager that summer, rather than January, is the best time to part ways.

And coming back briefly to Ramsey, his amazing goal aside, he was pretty great in general in the first half. He tackled well, passed it well, and left the pitch with his third goal in two games. There are signs that the form he showed last season is returning and if that’s the case it’s very good news indeed because it does feel like we need somebody other than Alexis who can give the team a bit of spark.

Afterwards, the manager said:

We gave a strong response. We were dangerous every time we won the ball back, had good penetration, goals and until half-time we were very strong. In the second half we suffered a bit more – some players had not enough competitive games and I had to take two players off. We were a bit more lightweight in midfield. It was, overall, a strong performance.

It means that we can take something into Saturday’s game against Newcastle that isn’t a direct hangover of the Stoke game. They’ll arrive on a high having beaten Chelsea last weekend and we’ll have to work hard, and be a lot better, to get the three points. There should be no talk of turning corners or anything like that, not yet. We’ve got to find some consistency, but I’d much rather be playing this weekend off the back of a win and performance that’s in some way restorative than one which caused more damage.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to watch that goal again.