Most people expected this to be a relatively easy three points for Arsenal and it’s possible that the team thought this was going to be an easy three points too. It didn’t work out that way at all.
We started very brightly and had Birmingham on the back foot from the first minute. We won a number of corners (a couple of which caused a bit of bother before the rest of our corners for the entire game were rubbish – perhaps a watching David Beckham could impart some set piece advice before he goes back to America) and had a couple of half-chances through Eduardo and Adebayor. Eduardo should have put us one up when he got his head to a fantastic left footed cross from Alex Hleb but his header was straight at Maik Taylor. Almunia then made a good save from Cameron Jerome.
We did get the lead after 21 minutes when Kelly was adjudged to have brought down Eduardo. It was a very generous penalty in my opinion but Adebayor tucked it away nicely to make it 1-0 to us. We seemed to coast a bit after that though, as if the job had been done already, and while we dominated the play we didn’ t really trouble the Birmingham defence or the keeper too much.
The second half began poorly, we didn’t seem to be concentrating and gave the ball away a couple of times before it was put behind for a corner. From the kick Mathieu Flamini’s marking wasn’t great and Gary O’Connor headed it in to make it 1-1. We huffed and puffed for the rest of the half but you had the feeling it was going to be one of those days. Philippe Senderos (who played very well and that will do his confidence a lot of good) had a header saved, Flamini’s shot from outside the box was well saved but we didn’t click at all in the final third of the pitch today. Late on Cesc had a shot and Hleb fizzed a ball across the goal and Gallas nearly got a touch to score but it wasn’t to be. Two points dropped and we’re now second in the league on goal difference to Manchester United who beat Newcastle 6-0.
Normally after games like that Arsene talks about how well we did, how we made chances, etc etc, but he didn’t appear to be in a good mood as he quite pointedly said:
We lost concentration on the set-piece … but we didn’t create enough overall. Today we lost two points we should not have lost and I’m confident that the team will refocus, because they are really disappointed. We need sharply to refocus because that kind of focus we have shown today is not sufficient.
When you think that a number of the players should have been well rested having not played in the cup games it was a very disappointing performance. The result you can live with because these things happen in football. You can’t win every game but we really couldn’t get things going as an offensive force yesterday. Theo Walcott really struggles out on the wing while Cesc is finding it hard to recapture the form he showed before his injury. I don’t want to say we rely on Cesc to play well but when he’s on form it usually transmits itself to the rest of the team. We probably missed Tomas Rosicky, struck down by flu, and you can’t help but wonder if a fit Robin van Persie might have made the difference. Even so the boss is not going to make any panic buys in the transfer window.
It just seemed like they thought it was going to be an easier game than it was, perhaps a little touch of complacency kicking in, but we know every game in this league is a difficult game if your approach isn’t 100% right. Arsene’s comments about needing to refocus are very telling. He knows his players didn’t give him the kind of performance he wanted and I suspect there’ll be a lot of hard work on the training ground. And that’s all they can do – put this behind them and get concentrated fully on the next game. We’ve spoken all season about the character of this team, they need to show it against Fulham next week. Will they learn from the Birmingham performance?
In other news Patrick Vieira calls William Gallas a ‘class player’ and a ‘real asset’ to Arsenal, while it seems the club are preparing to offer him a new deal to keep him at the club for the rest of his career.
Elsewhere Manuel Almunia has played down all the ‘Almunia for England’ crap, which is a good thing in my opinion.
And that’s really about it. We’ve got almost a full week without interruption until the next game (for the first time in ages), time to get ourselves organised and back on track, because we can’t really afford too many more slip-ups like this.
Till tomorrow, have a good Sunday.
