Sunday, August 12, 2007

Arsenal 2-1 Fulham

Well three points to start the season is always nice. The way it happened though was not so nice. On with the match report.

Our lineup looked like this:

Lehmann
Sagna-Toure-Gallas(c)-Clichy
Eboue-Fabregas-Flamini-Rosicky
Hleb
Van Persie

Eduardo was not even named on the bench, so he must really have been injured. The bench was Almunia, Song, Senderos, Walcott and Bendtner.

So the match got off to a rough start for the Gunners, with David Healy scoring a cunty goal in the first minute after Jens' clearance went right to him. 0-1 to Fulham.

Hleb had a good claim for a penalty on 10 minutes but Phil Dowd (cunt) said no. It really should have been a penalty though.

Arsenal seemed to pick it up after that, and it was one way traffic for the rest of the half. Eboue and Sagna were working well on the right as well as Clichy and Rosicky on the other side. It seemed like Rosicky was shooting every other minute but nothing was going in and in typical Arsenal fashion we were making an average keeper (Tony Warner) look legendary. He did have a good game though but we still had too may missed chances.

Half time came and the score was still 0-1, despite efforts from Hleb, Rosicky, RvP, and Cesc. Warner was keeping everything out and it was starting to be extremely frustrating as well as slightly embarrassing.

The same thing happened to start the second half, more chances created but no goals to show for it. Rosicky, Van Persie, and Kolo all went close but were thwarted by the defenders and Warner.

Walcott came on in the 62nd minute Eboue, because he's probably a bit more attack minded and you could tell Arsene was genuinely worried at this point. Walcott wasn't very effective in my opinion though.

In the 72nd minute Bendtner came on for his league debut for Rosicky. This gave us two strikers plus Walcott and we were giving a very attacking approach, yet it still didn't pay off for the next 12 minutes.

In the 83rd minute Kolo went on an immense run, getting past 3 defenders before being tripped up in the box and the penalty was given. Van Persie stepped up to take it and I honestly was worried sick about it but he smashed it home with Warner going the other way. 1-1 was the score.

The strangest thing happened after that, Warner wouldn't give the ball back to anyone to take to the center circle. He was literally surrounded by the entire Arsenal team trying to get the ball back. Finally Flamini got it away from him, and while the ref was carding Warner, Papa Bouba Diop stole the ball again, and he was carded as well as Flamini. Eventually we got the ball back to center and the game was on again.

Arsenal were pushing everyone forward and Fulham's time-wasting tactics were bloody embarrassing. i honestly thought someone would at least get a second yellow for it.

In the 88th minute Bendtner made a very strong header towards goal that was deflected and then cleared.

Then in the 90th minute, Hleb received a pass on the penalty spot and controlled it wonderfully before slotting it cleanly home. Arsenal 2-1 Fulham. The whistle was blown shortly after and we have our first three points of the season.

Man of the Match: Kolo Toure - Was as strong as ever in defense but more importantly realized that we needed an equalizer and stepped up his game to go for goal twice, once having a good shot just blocked and the other time giving us our penalty kick.

Needs Work: I have to give this to Jens just over Flamini. Fulham had very few chances to score and would have only even come close once if Jens' error would not have allowed them to score the first goal. Flamini is just not impressive. Maybe it's just me but I never see anything out of him that makes me think he's good enough to start for Arsenal.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

good start to the season, really frustrating the hole way thru tho.
so important we won to start the season on a high and give the team belief they can do well this season.
lehmanns error was comical altho extremely annoying and frustrating, what happened?!
done well to win in the end with the penalty and a good goal from hleb, hopegfully we can get a good result against prague on wednesday.

Anonymous said...

i really had a feeling that we would approach teams differently but unfortunatly it was same old arsenal but i fink it was a huge result for us. think were gonna have the same problems, but i think we'll go far in the cups, but u know its difficult 2 judge us on the first day of the season. what is for dam sure is that i dont think ANY team can comprehensively beat a premiership team with more than 4 key player out (notice no 3-0 or 4-1's. every team has quality. and i fink we'll see more teams beating the top 4 regularely.