After watching all of our rivals drop points on Saturday, it was obvious that Arsenal couldn’t just think they would have an easy game against Burnley yesterday afternoon, despite the Clarets’ dismal away record. And so it proved, as Burnley yet again frustrated us at every turn, just as they did at Turf Moor in the opposite leg.
And yet again it took a last second winner for Arsenal to take the points, but it also proved yet again that the Gunners will fight right up until the final whistle when they are searching for a winner.
Arsene Wenger looked to have a very stressful second half, and he made it clear how frustrated he was. “I feel it was an intense game,” he said. “where we played against a team who made the game very uncomfortable for us, but we had to be patient and not to make defensive mistakes with their direct game, which we did quite well.
“But once we were 1-0 up we made it even more complicated by going down to 10 men and then of course it was a bit on the edge. But they didn’t create chances, not many, but they looked dangerous always on set-pieces, on long balls and I felt it was a bit frustrating after we conceded a penalty. Coquelin says he didn’t touch him, but I haven’t seen it, but in the end we still got an unlikely win because when you are 10 against 11 with two minutes to go, it’s difficult to win the game. But we are a team who keeps going no matter what happens and that’s a good quality.”
So Arsenal may have had to fight until the end, but it was worth it as we have moved back up to second place behind Chelsea, but Wenger thinks that his team should just concentrate on putting our own winning run in order and not worry about how our rivals get on. “It was an important game, but not a decisive game. I think at the moment what is more important is for us to build a run, to have a consistency in our results. That is more important than to look at the table, because I think we have built a strong run after we lost two games. Now we are in a position where we have to build up a run, so every game of course helps to create confidence and belief.”
We are now on a 5-game unbeaten run again, and if we can get all 3 points against Watford in 8 days time, then we will be in good heart to face the League leaders on the following weekend in which could be our big throw of the dice in the title race….
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I was watching the game with a friend who’s a Chelsea fan and he suggested the match was rigged against Arsenal after Xhaka was sent off, in fact he showed me YouTube videos of Howard Webb celebrating a Tottenham goal against Arsenal to further prove his point after the penalty against us especially after that inexplicably long added time. My response was “that is how champions are made, they find a way in spite of the odds and if my boys can’t do this, they are not fit to contend for the title ” and thanks to Alexis’ relentlessness especially, pulled that one out of the fire.
I am not sure the ref celebrating the goal against Arsenal was Webb. I believe it was Dean. It is easy to fall for the conspiracy theory and you may be right, I don’t know. There’s though couple of things against your suggested trend of actions: Xhaka’s foul was indeed an intentional vile one. I don’t know if it hurts but the intention is what matters. The ref did not actually intended the red, was the linesman. The same linesman did not spot the obvious offside for our goal and the blatant penalty against Mustafi. Ref was always badly positioned throughout the game, really poor ref-ing. Just shows that just as English players, the English refs are hugely overrated as well.
Secondly, how do you explain our really poor game? Like minutes and minutes of sideways and backward passes? Chech was at some point the most played player in our squad. This is not a coincidence, our system does not work against pressing opponents. We have no answer to it. I say for over an year now, stop this stupid 4231 system. It just doesn’t work when opponents put bodies in the middle. Chelsea will have a line of 5!!!! people in the midfield at any time and we will have to cope with 4 because Ozil is not going to offer much in the defense. Do you see a trend?
Again, I am not saying there’s not a bias against Arsenal but my gosh, is hard to ignore our huge, discomforting problems. How about we fix these and then we can talk about games being rigged? besides, it just sounds silly and make us the laughing stock blaming everyone else for our shortcomings.
Arsenal are fighters.. We know it.. This current crop of players can actually fight.. That’s why I get angry and mad when we bottle things up because sometimes we bottle our chances.
Let’s hope Liverpool defeat Chelsea or at least they share the point.
Then we go to Stamford Bridge and show the world what we are made of. In fact, that’s gonna show us what we have become this season. We defeated them at the Emirates but haven’t won any top side in the league this season so we really need to step up if we wanna be counted..
Anyway, Chelsea game is first week of February. Let me focus on our next game first..
If this crop were fighters as you put it then what stopped them fight until the end at Godison and Etihad? It doesn’t work that way only when you want. Either you are a fighter the whole 9 yards or you don’t call yourself one.
For too long, we have been complacent, this team is only beginning to learn to fight non stop thanks to Alexis especially, he was mad at Giroud celebrating that equalizer instead of going for the kill, he was mad at Ramsey for being always to careless with the ball, some of us called it petulant behavior, some of us disagreed and called it an unrelenting appetite for the game, in the end Ramsey is becoming less complacent, we are learning to get on with the game until we secure a result, I can’t imagine Sanchez would have joined in celebrating that infamous fourth place a few years back.
Other games count too as Arsenal have now built a six games unbeaten run in all competitions after they last lost a PL match away to Man City. But for now, let’s focus on how we are going to dispose of Southampton from the FA Cup 4th round at ST Mary’s this Saturday to extend our unbeaten run to seven games in all applications. Let’s in the interim forget about our Watford and Chelsea PL games until after we’ve dealt with Southampton. This is important.
We were lucky and that’s nice for a change. The unbeaten run is not so important to me, we need to go on a 10 game winning streak. Draws are not good enough if you want to catch a team 8 points ahead of yourself.
Now that I have expressed my happiness about the 3 points in numerous posts; We need to play better to make sure we put teams away before the 75th minute. We can not always keep talking about how well the midtable teams defended. We need to take our chances and be 2 goals clear at half time.
To me, we need to go back to the formula with which we played our best games which is Sanchez in the middle flanked by two speedsters. Teams that defend well have a harder time with a high-paced game than with crosses to the head of Giroud.
Van djik is injured?