Sunday, November 20th, 2011 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade
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“Making the Arsenal” – the book of Arsenal’s rebirth
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By Walter Broeckx
Sometimes you have those games that after 20 minutes you look at the scoreboard and think: is this really the score of the game I am seeing? How on earth did Norwich managed to be 1-0 up after 20 minutes I was wondering at home. How long would we be missing chances ?
If I want to be dramatic I could say this was the worst Arsenal performance of the last 125 years at least looked at from the finishing point of view. It looked as we agreed not to score at all at the start of the game. Or maybe we wanted to avoid a Newcastle like last season when we did finish the first chances and later the ref came back to equalize for Newcastle?
But instead of criticising our own players we could of course give credit for the way Norwich defended. Their goal line clearances where spot on to be honest. I think any defender will be proud of such saves. And we must give credit for the keeper also. He made a few great stops. I think the one in the second half when Gervinho had already beaten him but he threw himself back from a lost position to block the shot. As a former keeper I couldn’t but curse him but admire him at the same time.
Talking about Gervinho, I think he had his most unlucky game for Arsenal. I think he was great going forward and causing all kinds of problems for the defenders. But it was as if he just couldn’t score in this game. Those things can happen. I guess a hat-trick against Dortmund will be enough to get over this game of missed chances for Gervinho.
Talking about hat-tricks. I was a bit disappointed with Van Persie. He should have had one today I feel. Okay just joking. Talk about world class! Well we had it all the time in our dressing room. But a small but loud part of the fan base didn’t see it for a long time, or maybe didn’t want to see it.
But our manager knew about it all the time. And like only Wenger can do it he worked and worked and worked. And Van Persie worked on his game. And worked. And worked.
Last season when Wenger put RVP out as the striker in the middle those same loud mouthed part of the fans said that surely the old fool (Wenger that was) had lost it. How could Van Persie ever be a decent striker? Well I think most of them by now will deny that they ever said something like that and they will proclaim that they knew it all along ever from the moment that we bought him as a young troublemaker from Feyenoord.
Maybe they will claim that they said 5 years ago that Wenger should play him in the middle. Oh well it is plain to see, if you want to see: Wenger knows. Wenger knew what he was doing with RVP. And if our captain would leave us I am sure Wenger will know what to do to replace him. He will know much better than all those loud mouthed fans who pretend they know something about football.
Mertesacker was not the luckiest person on the pitch in the 16th minute. I am not going to interfere with the ref review so just will ignore if there was a foul or not. But it was one of those balls that with the spin on the ball and the striker breathing in the neck not the slightest mistake could be made. I know part of the fan base will crucify him for that moment of hesitation. You could see him think: do I head it back to the keeper with the risk of the striker getting in between or do I try to shield the ball. That fraction of doubt was enough for the striker to get away with it. With whatever “it” is.
But if we had lost points today I don’t think we could blame Mertesacker. It was our forwards who missed too many chances. And those mistakes made our game difficult. Not that mistake from Mertesacker. Which didn’t help of course but at that moment we should have had a comfortable lead and would have made Norwich lose their belief in themselves.
Another player who deserves a mention is Koscielny. I think he did a great defensive job. But you could see that is not a full back and so he didn’t join in the attack as Sagna and Jenkinson do at times. But playing out of position like he had to do : a great game from him.
All in all we were the far better team of the day. We deserved to go home with 3 points and should have made life easier on ourselves. And on the nerves of our supporters. But you could see that the team has a maturity unseen in the last years now. We didn’t panic when Norwich tried to throw everything at us in the last minutes. And when we got the ball we tried to run the clock down in a very professional way. I think that part is also very pleasing.
And also the fact that Szczesny was very much unemployed once again over the whole 90 minutes. But when we needed him, he just was on the right spot.
An important victory with a too small margin but again a very good and hard working performance of all 11 players on the pitch. And as long as they keep on doing that part of the job, we will be fine.
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