No one could possibly forget last year’s exciting end to this game last season, and we were hoping not to have such a nail-biter this time around, and with 14 shots in the first half hour you would have thought we were certain to be a couple of goals ahead at half time.
In fact, Bournemouth should have been a man down when Saka had his shin attacked with venom, but the weird referee waved play on.
But at the other end, the final ball never happened for us, and to be fair to Bournemouth, they were given a couple of big chances due to Gabriel’s strange errors, but luckily the Cherries couldn’t take advantage.
The suddenly in the closing seconds of the first half, we were awarded a penalty, that to be honest, looked like it should have been a straight goal instead of leaving the trailing foot to touch the keeper, but I’ll take it.
Thankfully, Saka made no mistake and we finally took the lead on the stroke of half time, but I hoping to see us play a bit more clinical in.
1-0 is better than nada!
The second half started like the first and after just 3 minutes Saka wasted a golden chance when the ball was placed at his feet by Havertz inside the Bournemouth box, but again no banana.
Havertz got a bit closer 3 minutes later, but Travers managed to get a hand to it.
Bournemouth started looking dangerous as they probed for an equaliser, and Raya had to make a couple of crucial saves in the next 10 minutes and the bum starting squeaking. We really need another goal to settle our nerves.
And we finally got it in the 70th minute, with a beautiful lay-off from Havertz straight into the path of Trossard who made no mistake to put us 2-0 up and allow us fans to breathe again.
But not for long! 2 minutes later the Cherries put the ball in the net, but with all the pinballing in the box, the referee happily disallowed it due to a (little) nudge on Raya. Thank the refereeing gods..
And then Odegaard missed a golden pass from Saka to put us 3 up, but hit the side netting. The pressure nowhere near over in the last 15 minutes.
Oh my, Martinelli could have quickly got another missed chance, and the Gabriel had a brilliant goal disllowed as Havertz was offside. Surely we have done enough now to put us 4 points ahead of City yet again.
Even the 8 minutes added time was exhililarating, and was excellently capped off by Declan Rice scoring a brilliant technical finish to make the game done and dusted.
Great game!
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