Monday, February 27, 2012

Painfully disinterested performance

In our most important game of the season where we had no excuse to lose to underachieving Arsenal, we came out looking like a better side, that is, till we scored in the 6th minute, when we decided its for the best if Arsenal controlled the tempo and game in general. Not sure if this was Harry's tactic or were we this disinterested in game.

In my opinion, Arsenal was much hungrier for a victory, which isn't a surprise and the only reason they snatched one is due to a lack of motivation among the team, who really should have preformed better, especially in defence. Our squad is undoubtedly better than theirs was, and witch such, you would expect a dominant display with a midfield with such creativity, yet Arsenal control the midfield battle where Parker seemed lost, Modric disinterested, Bale selfish and Kranjcar, well, simply not good enough.

We were able to take the lead, thanks to some horrific defending by Vermaelen which allowed Saha the position he got himself into when we took the lead. A magnificent start non the less, after that, things just got slower with our players with only Arsenal creating chances. After some time, Bale was apparently brought down by Szczesny and a penalty was given, but in all honesty, that was no penalty. Bale clearly took a dive, and a good one, as it fooled the referee quite easily. Anyway, Adebayor converted the penalty which saw us take a 2:0 lead in the 34th minute. Even though we were in the lead, I had a constant feeling Arsenal was close to scoring, which then happened, when Sagna outjumped our defenders and scored a header in the box. Shortly after that, Van Persie scored a goal when he was given space to shoot and Friedel couldn't do much about it. Marking tightly was a must for Van Persie, and it was obvious that Harry saw that, too in the second half, but it allowed Walcott a lot of space, and he sure took his chances.

While we still have 7 points ahead of London rivals, with the form shown against Arsenal, I fear we could repeat the last season, where we dropped in form and at the end of the season, barely got to a 5th place.

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