Morning, or should I say afternoon, fellow gooners.
Apologies for no blog over the weekend. I was in the process of moving house, something i will have to do again by the end of the month. What joy.
As such, I only caught the second half of the Newcastle performance, but what I did see was rather lovely. Yes, we probably should have won 4/5-0, but, still, sometimes we should just sit down and appreciate the lovely football we can play, and realise that winning by the hugest margin possible isn't always necessary.
I was particularly impressed with Adebayor's performance, despite some appalling finishing, and that of RvP and Cesc.
Despite his goals, it is still a worry that Robin struggled to complete 90 minutes in what was essentially a pretty relaxed match. I think he has the ability to be a great player, but I'm not sure if his body can hack it.
So, no real complaints about our performance. The only thing which left a bad taste in the mouth was the appearance of Joey Barton at the end of the match. Now, and in a rare moment of actual insight, Mark Lawrenson summed Barton up: everyone (almost) deserves a second chance when they make mistakes in life. But his imprisonment was merely the latest in a string of violent incidents he's been involved in during his career. Newcastle should be ashamed he's their player, especially given how Barton decided to involve himself in the match.
In response to, justified, booing, Barton lunged in with a two-footed swipe at Samir Nasri. There's a line between acceptable and non-acceptable physicality in a football match and he crossed it with that appalling lunge.
So I was heartened to see Samir not take it lying down. His cheeky trip was rather lovely compared to Barton's thuggish assault. It also showed that Samir isn't a player to be easily cowed, which is also heartening.
Finally, it's deadline day today, but I have not, really, seen us linked with anyone, apart from the customary links to Alonso, and a rather odd rumour involving us taking Metzelder on loan from Real Madrid for a year.
I'm confident we will sign at least one player today; we certainly need to, and given Arsene's past record, we shouldn't be worried, necessarily, by the lack of public rumours Don't let us down Arsene.
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11 comments:
It was also nice to see that Samir can take a free kick. Something we lack when RVP is not on the pitch.
I've watched the Nasri thing a couple of times in slo mo, and i cannot see any contact. It looks like Barton just went down without being touched. If he did it shows a very caclulating mind. Knowing that the ref would think Nasri would retaliate and dropping like a stone when he came near him.
Its something we lack when RVP IS on the pitch.
As such, I only caught the second half of the Newcastle performance, but what I did see was rather lovely. Yes, we probably should have won 4/5-0,..........
If you had seen the first half too, you would be saying 7/8-0 !
Barton deserves the same fate his brother dealt an innocent young boy. Absolute disgrace of a "human being" and surely only welcomed in a club where the owner blatantly breaks the law in full view in their oh so classy manner.
It was lovely seeing arsenal play close to the Arsenal of yester-year, nice flowing football...and looks like Arsene has uncovered another gem in Vela... Im not worried about us going forward at all, with Dudu coming back also...maybe even rocky one day,lol..
But we are crying out for a big strong defensive midfielder, what about Stephen Appiah, id love to see veloso, but hes guna be far to expensive, even for Scolari never mind Arsene...shame, what do you think?
At least someone sees what I saw! I also watched the replays in slow mo many times and I really don't know where Samir made contact with Barton.
Anyways, people say that Barton's tackle was fair, which is true, he got the ball first. What wasn't right was the way he gouged into Nasri's thigh with his elbow. That had to hurt...but I'm glad Nasri wasn't intimated by him at all.
I think you have to see Keegan's rather bizarre attack on Nasri at the end of the game and in the press for what it is - a rather poor attempt to divert the attention from his players pretty poor tackle and his own lack of judgement in bringing Barton onto the pitch. It wouldn't be the first time the media had bitten when a poor tackle was made on one of our players (Eduardo vs. The Blessed St Martin Taylor, anyone..?) so maybe Keegan thought he'd jump on that bandwagon. I suppose he neglected to realise that the primary differenceS beyween Taylor and Barton include that Taylor has yet to serve time and doesn't appear to be an habitual criminal.
Best atmosphere I've experienced in months at the Grove on Saturday. Brilliant, noisy support (couldn't hear the Geordies all afternoon) and a great performance - no coincidence !
Best atmosphere I've experienced in months at the Grove on Saturday. Brilliant, noisy support (couldn't hear the Geordies all afternoon) and a great performance - no coincidence !
We don't really have anyone that can score a free kick from the left side of the pitch when the free kick is close to the box, which is why it was good to see Nasri get a good shot on target from that position. Cesc can't really shoot from free kicks and when he does, they often hit the wall.
The problem is that we don't have anyone that can lift the ball over the wall and put it into the near post. The keeper is stationed at the far post and if you saw the two free kicks we had on target against Newcastle, Van Persie and Nasri both bent the ball around the wall but Given was positioned to deal with it. The free kick Hargreaves scored against us at Old Trafford last season is what I'm talking about-we have no one that can score a free kick like that.
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