Monday, September 26th, 2011 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

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By Walter Broeckx

After last week and our defeat the end of the World was upon us. Once again. Now as an Arsenal supporter I have been used to ends of the worlds if I would go further on what the media has been telling us. But today the sun is shining, the birds are signing and the last warmth of the sun is turning this in to a nice day.

Oh and yes of course we won the game against Bolton. This sure adds to the good feeling.  Now people who don’t like our win will find something to moan about. And they will try to attack us further in the media. And they will attack our manager in the media. But the supporters in the stadium sang out his name at the end of the game. And I wonder how the media will report this. If they would report it? Would be interesting to know if they did mention it or not?

But not all is good for Arsenal. The fact that we now are certain that Wilshere needs an operation and will be out till the end of the year is bad news. Very bad news. Certainly for Jack himself. So wish him the best with the surgery and hope he recovers well.

But this brings us to the fact that the players that have been carrying the Arsenal in the last season are all gone and out for the moment. No more Cesc. No more Nasri. And to make things worse: no more Jack for the moment. But the good thing is that Jack will be back. Can’t wait to see him back.

But how many teams could cope with losing 3 of their best players from last season? So is it really a surprise to have a difficult start of the season? The new players need time to adapt to the system, to their team mates and this takes time. The fact that other key players are out with injury is also not very helpful. So the start was and is poor but certainly there are reasons that we can see for this.

The first half of the game against Bolton was not yet very good stuff. We played too slow I felt and they kept it very tight as we expected them to do. People will say that we were lucky at the start of the game when Szczesny pulled a superb save out of his wonder hat. And yes what a save that was. But may I also point at the fact that this happened when Koscielny was out of the field after clashing his head with Ngog. And in fact this was the only time that Bolton really came close to scoring a goal.  And it was the first of only 3 shots in 90 minutes they could make at the Arsenal goal. May I repeat: 3 shots in 90 minutes IN TOTAL from Bolton.

As for Arsenal we had a total of  23 shots in 90 minutes football. 14 shots on target and 9 off target. Again this is a rather high number and again I would say that is too many shots for too few goals. But once again I think the best player on the pitch in an Arsenal game maybe was the opposite ( Bolton)  goalkeeper. I must admit that a few times I was jumping up, sure of the ball going in, only to sink down disappointed after another save from Jaskulaainen.  So we could have had a high score at the end but had to settle for just 3 goals. Better not score all your goals in one game and leave a few for the next games I would say.

In terms of possession we also see clear numbers : 62% for Arsenal and 38% for Bolton. That was the story of the game.

All this makes me believe that slowly we are getting back to the Arsenal we have known from the last seasons.

The dominating Arsenal from start to finish of the game. Not all was well and good. But even with Cesc and Nasri (and Jack) we lost games.

What I enjoyed most of this game? The fact that we didn’t give Bolton a real chance over 90 minutes was something very good I thought. The work ethic during the whole game from almost all the players was very well.

Our forward play was not as fluent as it might have been in the first half but everyone was working hard and tried to play their part. Maybe not the 100% perfect long ball we were used to see from Cesc but certainly in the second half we did play some very good stuff at times.

Szczesny with almost nothing to do but when needed was there to gather those 3 balls fired at him and believe me nothing more difficult for a keeper than such a game. So he kept focussed for 90 minutes and this is something very good and important for such a young goalkeeper.

Our defenders looked ready for what was coming at them and thanks to the hard working midfield this was almost nothing but also letting Bolton not having a shot during the game indicates that they did their job almost to perfection.

So I thought this was a game that brought back memories of the previous seasons. Let us hope this continues in the next games and the squad will come together even more.