The North Bank – “It’s got va-va-voom” (An Arsenal blog)

A big result for the team yesterday against Wigan at the JJB stadium. I gave a detailed match report yesterday so I won’t go into that at all now but, suffice to say, the team did what was needed and got the all-important three points. It seemed that the result would not go in our favour after an hour gone but all credit to the team for managing to get back into it by not playing at all well in the opening hour. We were very poor for large parts of the game and the defining moment came in the fourth minute of first half stoppage time when the referee was very lenient by only showing Gibbs a yellow card after hauling Valencia down outside the box. Truth be told it was a red card offence as he was the last man back as Silvestre would not have been able to get back to make a challenge.

Luckily the resulting free-kick struck the inside of Fabianski’s left-hand post and rebounded out. If we had gone two goals down on the stroke of half-time then it would have been game over, ball burst. But, it didn’t and I have to say that it is nice to get a big slice of luck for a change. After all of the injuries and bad decisions that have gone our way over the last two seasons maybe this was a bit of karma. We were a lot better after the second goal and were in complete control as Wigan tired.

Afterwards, the boss had this to say:

“I feel we have shown great character again. This young team has a lot of mental strength. We have shown some qualities that make it very interesting for the future. Wigan were very strong and committed in the first-half. We had problems with their man-to-man marking. But I felt in the second-half our technique took over. We looked dangerous every time we had the ball.”

It is good to see that the team can play woefully but still get a result, especially away from home. This should fill them with confidence for the remainder of the season and for the future. Not that they should be happy with their contribution in the opening hour or so, but they kept plugging away and made the most of the few chances they did eventually create. I’m delighted with the result and it gives us a nine point lead over fifth-placed Villa who will play Everton later today. I suppose a 0-0 draw would be the best result for us in that game.

Wigan boss Elephant Man had this to say:

“The disappointing thing for me was the second and third goals. It was comical stuff really. We have gifted Arsenal goals after a great hour when we worked so hard to deny Arsenal space. We are a bit shell-shocked. It would be difficult to say it was schoolboy stuff as that would be disrespectful to schoolboys.”

We weren’t at our best and maybe we were lucky that Wigan seemed to be on a mission to out-shit us with some really laughable defending. I don’t feel any sympathy for them, oh no, not with the Elephant Man as their manager. Unusually for a player/manager with ManUre connections, his team didn’t get the rub of the green at the end of the first half. I’m assuming that is the ‘shell-shocked’ feeling that the Elephant Man was referring to… I think Alan Wiley is a bit of a cock, but he certainly did us a favour yesterday. This may sound a bit of Patsy Palmer-esque hyperbole, but that result yesterday could be a defining moment of our season. Had we lost, we would have gone into the game against Villarreal with dented confidence. As it stands, the team will go into the game on a high and we will have Van Persie available and, hopefully, Eduardo too.

Early team news ahead of the 2nd leg against Villarreal is that their scorer from the first leg, Marcos Senna, is a big doubt for the game having picked up a hamstring injury during their weekend 0-2 home defeat against Málaga. Let’s hope that it is serious enough to keep him out of that game. They also have doubts over Mati Fernández (left ankle) and Cani (thigh). Santi Cazorla, of course, is out until next season with a broken leg.

Kudos to Alex Song for getting on the score-sheet with a well taken goal. I’ve hammered him a bit lately so it’s just right to give credit where it’s due for his run and finish.

Gunnerblog has some very interesting quotes from Wenger about our early season woes here. Read it. It shows that his faith wasn’t as un-blinkered as his media comments suggested. We had all hoped that he didn’t really believe everything that he was saying publicly at the time, that surely his faith couldn’t be so unconditional and unwavering. Now we know. Arsene knows, he just doesn’t always tell us.

Walcott has had this to say:

“It is such a young team but we have that experience from last season and I think it has definitely paid off this year. We had our bad spell in mid-season but there are some absolutely brilliant players in that dressing room. We dig in when we go 1-0 down, we just need to keep a clean sheet, but we are scoring goals from different positions which helps the team and we just want to get in the Champions League spots.”

He makes a good point that it isn’t only the strikers getting the goals. we are now scoring from attack, midfield and defence and that bodes well for our chances of silverware this season. Let’s hope we don’t pick up any more injuries from here on out as we are now beyond bare bones in defence following the injury to Djourou yesterday. Hopefully his injury won’t be too bad and he can return to the squad sooner rather than later.

***UPDATE: This gives me a nice warm feeling inside. I’m glad we are controlled by people that feel they are custodians of the club and that our debts are serviceable. Happy Easter!

Okay, that’s all for today. It’s sunny and warm outside, so it’s time for me to go and enjoy what’s left of the evening heat.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 12th, 2009 at 16:07 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.