Arsenal 3 - Everton 1 (And Fernebache tonight!)
Gosh - its taken me ages to get round to this. 4 days ago seems like quite a while especially having watched Stoke heap on the misery for Sp*rs and Newcastle grow a pair of balls, whilst Manchester City take a further step towards expensive mediocirty since.
To be fair to Sp*rs, they’re reaping what they’ve spent seasons sowing. You just can’t change your manager and entire 1st team every season and expect anything else other than total collapse. Its a lesson worth heading that money doesn’t buy success. After some convincing performances last season, none less than when they beat Arsenal in the Carling Cup and eventually won the tournement, they decided to sell two of their best players and invest in other expensive players. They also sold most of their utility players to one club and suddenly its looking grim. All joking aside, maybe they actually will get relagated this season? Does the myth still persist that tottenham are a big club? To go from your best start in 15 years, sack the manager and then achieve your worst start ever - someone somewhere must be cursing their 20:20 hindsight.
Manchester City also look to be experiencing a few teething problems. Robinhio looks like he’s suddenly realised he signed for the wrong side of the city, Shaun Wright Phillips suddenly looks worse than Eboue (!) and Stephen Ireland plays football for exactly 3 minutes and 42 seconds in every 90 he spends on the pitch.
Newcastle finally grew some balls and showed some fight last night, which was about the best thing about an otherwise dull end to end (in the wrong sense of the phrase - the keepers played catch with each other for most of the match). They actually don’t look a bad team, especially having played 80 minutes with ten men. They looked far hungrier than City and maybe, just maybe, the tide will turn for them after the Eastenders inspired drama of the past few weeks. One things for certain, its defenitately not been boring at the ‘Toon, which ironically is what the Geordie bastards wanted (in addition to a failed manager who walked out on five jobs and has never won anything in top flight football).
Anyway it makes me wonder because Arsenal fans still seem to be demanding the cheque book comes out in January. I don’t think they realise that spending money in January won’t stop the hurt of losing to Fulham or Hull. In fact, new players in Janurary will take time to settle in and the team will be unbalanced again.
Either way Arsenal showed some real defensive frailty on Saturday. Lee Dixon spent 10 minutes taking us apart and pointing out our weaknesses on national TV for all of our upcoming opponents to learn (:)) and he was pretty much spot on. The one thing he didn’t seem to pick up on was Song in the right back postion. He kept getting drawn into the middle (his natural postion) and didn’t have the discipline to stay wide or the tactical knowledge in covering threats. Once Eboue moved to right back in the second half the majority of Evertons dominance down that side disapeared. I never thought I’d say this more than once in the same month but Eboue played very well in the second half.
Arsenal also did somthing a bit out of character. We scored a pretty scrappy goal, a goal from outside the area and a clinical finish from a winger. 3 virtual unkowns! How many times have I sat in front of the TV or in the ground screaming for a shot from anybody facing the goal? Seems like Nasri might be the new Ray Parlour (jk) and be partial to a shot every now and then. Cesc had a few distance shots saved or deflected as well, and it adds an important dimension to the game - we can’t walk it in every time and the goals need to come from all over the final third. Just think back to Giovanni for Hull - they never looked like scoring in a million years…. and then they won.
Silvestre looked ok at the back but he was never a shining star for united, more a dependable and I expect thats exactly why we snapped him up. A couple of murmings suggest he was at fault for the goal, but to be fair to the lad he was covering an incoming defender as well as trying to block a potential shot. Toure was nowhere and Song left the wing exposed so you can’t blame him.
Adebayor continues to look like a pretender and hopefully when Bendtner is back from injury we’ll see him given a chance, or the terrific Vela alongside RVP.
A win is a win, and a reason to be positive especially as it showed some character to battle back from one goal down to overcome a stubborn Everton team themselves searching for some good results.
The acid test comes in the next couple of weeks - we desperately need to hammer another nail into Spu*s and Man U will be the biggest test so far.
Filed by Kieran at October 21st, 2008 under Football