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

Today’s post will be a bit short because I’m feeling a bit tender today. A stag night in Tokyo will do that to a man.

Yesterday saw us take on Portsmouth at Fratton Park and we ran out comfortable 3-0 winners. I didn’t get to see the game due to the stag night and then I fell asleep on the Yamanote line endlessly circling Tokyo. So, I have just got Match of the Day and Arsenal TV’s highlights to go on.

The boss opted to rest most of our key players, with only Walcott, Song Arshavin and Denilson starting. The defence comprised of Fabianski, Sagna, Song, Djourou, Eboue, Walcott, Denilson, Ramsey, Arshavin (c), Bendtner and Vela. It was an extremely young bench made up of Mannone, Frimpong, Randall, Coquelin, Thomas, Merida and Bischoff

I had thought that the boss might go with Bendtner and Vela up front. The scoring was opened by Bendtner after he rose well to get on the end of a corner and you have to say that James really should have saved it. But, he didn’t and it was 1-0 to The Arsenal.

The second came after a Davis challenge on Arshavin in the box resulted in a penalty which Bendtner converted with a well placed penalty into the bottom corner, to the keeper’s left.

Portsmouth created one or two decent chances and, luckily, Crouch wasn’t able to stick them away. Utaka rounded  Fabianski but the challenge of the keeper was enough to put him off balance and Sagna was able to make the challenge and prevent a goal. Then Arshavin set up Vela for his sixth goal of the season and it was one he deserved.

The game was well and truly over by the time that Pamarot was sent off for a professional foul on Arshavin on the edge of the Portsmouth area.

Overall it was a good performance and result and it’s good for some of the younger players like Randall and Ramsey to get run-out. I thought Vela had a good game alongside Bendtner.

The boss had this to say about the game and his team selection:

“I wanted to give a breather to some of the players. We dominated completely the first half, we were sharp and composed with a great attitude and our two-nil half-time lead was well deserved. They changed their game plan at the start of the second half and we struggled a bit. They had the turning point with a potential 2-1, but after we scored the third goal, the game was over.”

It seems like Adebayor may be on his way out of the club and personally I don’t think that would be a bad thing to happen. He has had a really poor season and hasn’t worked in the majority of the games that he has participated. So, if we can get a good price for him, sell him. Also, why is he having telephone conversations with the vice president of AC Milan?

It seems that The City want to have a chat with Peter Hill-Wood regarding the recent trading of shares between Fiszman and Kroenke Tonk Stan. Though, I don’t expect there to be any major problem as there is a provision in the lockdown agreement which allows for trading between the shareholders should the other members of the agreement agree to it.

Right, that’s all for today. I need to go and lie down, relax and watch the rest of Match of the Day.

Have a good one.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 at 18:08 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.