Monday, September 19th, 2011 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade
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By Walter Broeckx
Because of some articles in our ref review series still waiting to be published from the previous game day I haven’t found the time to write about our dreadful day at Blackburn.
Now because of all the negative has been said before by others I thought I would have a look at the good things I saw against Blackburn.
A good thing should be that by now we surely should have had all our bad luck and all things going against us dealt with for the rest of the season.
I think on average each team gets some 3 or 4 own goals over a season. Well 2 in one game is something I never have seen before or cannot remember happening before. And I sure would think I will never see it again. So if this means that from now one we will be spared of such freak own goals for the rest of the season, and certainly more than one in one game, then fine with me.
An offside goal given against you can happen. In fact it happens also around 2 or 3 times in a season. So that is already two offside goals this season. So if all goes according to the big plan we should only have one or two if we are being very unlucky offside goals going against us for the rest of the season.
Don’t know yet about the not giving us a penalty when we should get one. The refs are seemingly not really going to give us much. But that is something we are used to for a while. I wonder how the new players will react when they find out that in their previous club they did get more decisions going their way.
And surely we will not have another team having 5 shots on our goal and scoring 4 goals this season. An amazing number. But we did lend them a helping knee and leg in those 4 goals.
But I was talking about positive things that I noticed. I think we played a great first half. We controlled the ball well, we played it well and in fact we kept Blackburn far away from our goal. Apart the one moment which lead to a goal.
We created enough chances to deserve our lead. So creating chances and producing shots on goal was not the problem. And I cannot help but think that this is a good sign. In the previous games we didn’t do this enough I think but it looks that attacking wise our players are getting back to a higher level.
Arteta played a good game and looks like a good addition to the team. And Gervinho made some great runs with the ball. If one does want to be critical one could say that in the first half with the score at 1-2 he should have passed the ball to Van Persie who could have scored the 1-3. Gervinho decided to take the shot himself which was blocked. So we could be critical on Gervinho for this. But how many times have we been shouting “shooooooooot” at our TV or in the Emirates in the last seasons. And asked to our neighbours after not taking the shot on: “why didn’t he shoot himself, why did he gave another pass?”. So maybe it is a good thing that Gervinho tried to shoot himself. All though a pass would have been the better option this time. Oh well, I think whatever they do, if they don’t score we will complain.
What I also liked was the reaction after the game had turned in such a dramatic way. Yes some players lost it for a while. I’m not going to deny this. I think Song was visible shocked by his own goal. And I think it drained him and his confidence went away. Also maybe his strength after being so dominant at Dortmund where he had covered a lot of ground. Making two own goals is a very freak thing to happen and so players will feel down for a moment. Replacing our most experienced defender in Arsenal colours was also not helpful for coming back.
But we did came back at them. And we created enough chances to still win the game comfortably. Robinson is the keeper who conceded most Arsenal goals in his career but he sure was determined to stop this negative number for him. And he did produced a few stunning stops. The Van Persie header from one or two yards out was a great reflex stop. On other days it would have gone in.
And maybe we will see Chamakh returning to his opening form of last season. When he scored a lot of goals. I think his finish for our 3rd goal was a good one. Hope he can build on it for the next weeks. I don’t know if you noticed it but in those final 10 minutes we actually threw in some crosses. Chamakh scored one and Mertesacker just headed over. In a way it looked a bit like a plan B. So with Mertesacker and possibly Chamakh we have a few big players that we can launch some crosses at when we need something different?
After going 4-2 down in the most strange and bizarre circumstances we somehow got back up and tried to get something from the game. Only we didn’t were lucky with our finishing (at least not in the right goal) and well the old familiar ref who refuses to do what he should do came back to haunt us.
We almost had one shot on goal every 3,5 minutes in this game. And then to think that for some 15 minutes we were down on the floor and couldn’t get anything going in the second half. But still we fought and nearly came back to clinch what would have been only a fair result: us taking a point and us winning would be the only real fair result.
But if you score 2 own goals you make life difficult for yourself. If you are on the receiving end of an offside goal you can feel hard done by. Nothing more can be done about the result. But we just must avoid shooting ourselves in the foot or better said in our own goal. But attacking wise we looked good enough to win this game.