No chance Bug Eyes
Gooners away and a bit of a free hit after winning at Old
Trafford the last time out. With Arsenal
having their best chance for years to win the title and still smarting after
our relatively recent 4-0 dicking of them – it isn’t going to be easy.
You kind of feel that it has to be Arsenal’s year this
season as both Chelsea and Man United are poor and we’ve just had the news that
Man City will have Pep Guardiola as manager next season which will not only
bring a brilliant manager to the wealthiest club but also the ability to
attract some really top players. Pep
doesn’t usually come second. Wenger’s
probably stubborn enough to think Arsenal can finish above City next season
with Giroud as their main striker, no decent defensive midfielder and
Mertesackofshit at centre back.
Wenger ‘s pre-match press conference of course revisited the
4-0 defeat at St.Mary’s and he once again needlessly brought up his assertion
that the first three goals should have been disallowed and our perceived (by
him) strong arm tactics. He didn’t
mention the two disallowed goals we had that should have stood. All of this is moaning and revision of
history is designed to put pressure on the referee, who today is Lee Mason who
is one of those referees that I don’t think anyone likes. I guess Arsene must be worried about playing
us and so he should be. I can’t think
about Arsenal though with thinking about last year at The Emirates when we got
a complete bag of shite off the referee in the league game and I’m expecting
the same today. It never happens in
favour of Arsene’s team though.
The transfer deadline day was a bit of a non-event for
Saints, as promised, with just Jack Stephens going out on loan to
Coventry. I’m a bit surprised at this to
be honest as we are currently playing three centre backs and we only really
have Goal-a-game Yoshida as a backup.
Florin Gardos isn’t fit yet and Jack is the most senior other than that.
To The Emirates and my seat is right on the very edge of the
Saints allocation and I’m next to a gangway which is about a metre wide and
then it’s the massed ranks of Gooners. I
got chatting to a steward who told me that the season tickets for behind the
goal next to the away end cost over a grand and were the cheapest in the
ground. For that price I guess they have
the right to do whatever they want, even if that’s sitting there very quietly,
taking abuse from the away fans. I can’t
imagine the fans in that area have much fun when Spurs are in town. One amusing thing that I found out about the
expensive Arsenal season ticket is included in the astronomical price, this
season they get 5 home cup games. Unfortunately
for the fans, the 5th was a shite FA Cup tie against a Championship
side and the 6th and therefore not included is Barcelona at home
which many season ticket holders won’t get tickets for and you can’t imagine
it’ll be a Category Cheap game for the one’s that do, so they’ll have to find
near on another hundred quid if they want to go. The steward might have been talking shite so
don’t shoot the messenger. Whilst we’re
on about ticket prices though, our tickets tonight were priced at £26 whereas
my Palace supporting mate had to pay £46 to sit in the same seat at the
Emirates last year. Bollocks isn’t it?
I was expecting a more or less unchanged team as we were off
the back of three wins in a row but no.
When the list of names was read out I first noticed that there was no
Matt Targett so we’re obviously going with 4 at the back. Romeu was in for Clasie and JWP was
playing. No Charlie Austin due to a
slight knock apparently – bollocks!
Still, Graziano is back and on the bench. Arsenal, clearly mindful of the mauling that
Shane gave them last time have left out Captain Mertesackofshit and have picked
Gabriel who I assume is quicker. All I know
him for really is allowing himself to be wound up a treat by Diego Costa and
getting himself sent off. When you see
names on the team sheet like Ozil and Sanchez you do think that it’s going to
be a tough one. Calum Chambers and Alex
Oxlade-Chamberlain, both of whom were linked with loan moves to us during the
past month, are continuing their career breaks by taking up their positions on
the Arsenal bench. I wonder if they have
a seat with their names on it or at the very least, I wonder if they always sit
in the same bench seat?
It’s a promising start all round as we settle down and play
some decent stuff and the referee allows a couple of hard but fair tackles from
Big Vic and Romeu. Ramsey is already
having a whinge and we’ve only just started. We win a free kick of our own out on the left
as Tadic is trashed by Bellerin. It
looks like Mason is going to let a lot go cos that would be a booking in a lot
of games. JWP curls it in and it just
goes over Virgil’s head and bounces goalwards, forcing Cech to shovel it round
the post.
We’re looking good and dominating possession but then
Arsenal get the ball and Dirty Sanchez looks up and pings an amazing ball over
Virgil to Ozil, whose eyes are clearly offside.
One ridiculous bit of ball control and he shoots but Fraser is down to
block with his feet. Bit of a warning
there.
Arsenal’s next attack is on 20 with Bellerin crossing under
no pressure from Tadic, Giroud flicking on and Ozil, eyes clearly offside,
stabs it goalwards from about 4 yards but Fraser throws up his left arm
instinctively and knocks it away for a corner.
It’s not quite up there with his save from Charlie Austin at QPR last
year but it’s pretty close.
There’s a guy two rows in front of me who is taking time out
from watching the game to check his phone and he’s found out that Spurs are 2-0
up at Norwich and is enjoying baiting the nearby Gooners with the news. Amazingly, they don’t bite, not even one of
them and they just carry on sitting there quietly.
We are creating chances of our own though but we seem to
have a lack of conviction. Firstly Tadic
picks it up on the edge of the box and makes space before curling a tame effort
into Cech’s midriff, then following a half cleared corner, Virgil flicks a ball
across and for a second Mané looks like he’s in but instead of hitting it first
time he delays and allows a defender to get close before squirting a shot
across goal and wide. Romeu also tries a
long range curler which is over Cech and flicks the roof of the net as it goes
behind. With a bit more quality from the
front men we could have a great night here.
The second half starts with Arsenal in the ascendency. Having refereed the first half very well, Mr
Mason seems determined to give Arsenal absolutely everything in the opening few
minutes and I wonder if Wenger’s been in his ear at half time. Our first sniff is from a shocking pass from
Flamini which is intercepted by Long and he takes off before treading on the
ball like a twat and now Arsenal are away and on the edge of our box. Giroud curls one towards to top corner and
Fraser takes off and flips it over the bar.
More over playing from Arsenal and this time it’s Bellerin
giving it away and Mané is running at the centre backs but instead of burning
past Koscielny he allows himself to be pushed wide and then scuffs his shot
straight at Cech from the edge of the box.
There are ironic cheers on 61 as Mason books Cédric for pulling back
Dirty Sanchez and the first ex-Saint makes an appearance with Theo Walcott
coming on for Joel Campbell who has done very little but more than
Oxlade-Chamberlain.
There’s an immediate chance for Walcott as the ball somewhat
fortuitously breaks for him on the right and he has a free shot by Fraser gets
a big boot in the way and then pushes the follow up effort round the post. The Wall is back. Dirty Sanchez then gets up well at the back
post and heads across but Fraser is down again to push it around the post. Another glorious chance goes begging as
Koscielny meets a Walcott cross from about 6 yards out and heads over the
bar. Maybe it’s going to be our
day. The Meerkats are still silent and
still not rising to the bait being offered from in front of me. ‘Spurs are winning lads... so are Leicester’.
Graziano is on for Tadic and Mané has moved to the left
wing. It makes sense as we’re now going
very direct anyway and Fonte goes down injured and the Arsenal fans get really
annoyed about it. Two minutes later with
a turban bandage applied to his head and they’re still getting irate about it
even though he’s clearly not time wasting.
I guess I’d be the same if the roles were reversed.
The sub has not stemmed the tide though and Arsenal and
Dirty Sanchez actually get the ball past the wall but JWP is there to hack it
off the line. WHAT ARE YOU DOING RONALD!
JWP is going off and fucking Juanmi is coming on. We now have four strikers on... why not
Clasie for fucks sake. We immediately
win a free kick on the right and with no JWP to take it, Bertrand curls it
straight to Cech. Aaaargh!
Mané is having a strange time of it at the moment. Back in the day when he was scoring goals and
confident, he’d quite happily fall down too easily and get booked if there was
a chance of a penalty. He had a golden
opportunity as Gabriel went off his feet in the penalty area but he stayed up
and nothing came of it. I’m not
advocating taking a dive but it’s odd that he didn’t given his past history.
With 10 to go the only sub I’m worried about coming on for
Arsenal is Oxlade-Chamberlain and from where I am it looks like he is as
Flamini trots off but in fact it’s Coquelin coming on. Is Arsene Wenger taking a point? Hardly a game changer is he. The first thing he does is get booked for a
cynical scythe into Long. Perhaps
realising that we have too many attackers on the pitch, Ronald pulls Mané and
puts Targett on the left wing and he immediately breaks forward only to be
brutally taken out by Gabriel who really is a bit shit. We again waste the free kick. Threr is of course time for some pinball in
our box as Arsenal go all Tika-Taka with Ozil, eyes still offside, at the
centre of it and he’s about to shoot when Virgil appears like a missile and
takes man and ball. For good measure,
Fraser stops a Dirty Sanchez follow up with his face.
We got the ball up their end one more time and it broke to Juanmi
on the edge of the box and he tried to take a touch and fucked it up and lost
the ball which prompted my first serious outburst of swearing and a ‘hit it you
useless little cunt’. My new steward
mate was pissing himself laughing and said ‘you do realise you’ve been swearing
at him since the moment he came on’.
6 minutes added time said the scoreboard. Shit…. But it passed without much incident,
the highlight being Virgil taking off from defence, pursued by Arsenal players
and every time one caught up he put on the burners and ended up nearly at the
corner flag in front of us before winning a throw. Brilliant.
Final whistle, 0-0, get in!
It’s a great result coming as it does, on top of the United win. Four points from two away games at Arsenal
and United. Snap. Hand. Off. Throughout the second half there was that
horrible growing feeling that it was going to be like last year here and we’d
concede late and go home with nothing and we certainly lived dangerously at
times. It’s not lucky though as we have
Fraser Forster. The Wall is fucking
back. Four games after missing the best
part of a year and he’s still to concede a goal. It’s been said that he didn’t really have to
work too hard for the other clean sheets but it was obvious that just his
presence is huge. It’s not that Maarten
Stekelenburg is a bad keeper, it’s just that he’s not as good as Fraser but
then, not many are. The big man has it
all and aside from the saves today, his command of the penalty area was massive
as well and much better than how I remember it pre-injury. Of the saves though the one from Bug Eyes Ozil
in the first half and Walcott in the second stand out. The Ozil one in particular because it was
right in front of me, his eyes were offside and the massed ranks of Gooners to
my left were celebrating already… well stood up in full Meerkat pose
anyway.
The Arsenal fans are a funny lot. They sit there as if in a silent prayer
meeting for the majority of the game and then do Meerkat impressions if something
vaguely exciting happens for them. That
moment though will be completely random – winning a throw-in on the half way
line etc. Mind you, paying what they do
I guess they can do what they want.
All the headlines will be about Fraser and rightly so but
there were other heroes as well including all of the defence and in front of
them, Big Vic and Romeu were immense.
Romeu was both brilliant and hilarious at the same time. He’d pile into tackles, win the ball, flatten
the Arsenal player, then fight his way away from three more players before
passing it five yards straight back to Arsenal.
The only disappointment is that we had chances and
situations that should have resulted in clear shots on goal but we butchered
them. The reluctance to shoot from the
edge of the box was back again with Big Vic, JWP, Mané and Tadic all being
guilty of not pulling the trigger at times.
When we did shoot it invariably ended up as a back pass to Cech which he
just picked up. Arsenal’s defence was
there for the taking with Gabriel and Koscielny making it seem that
Merteasckofshit was still out there.
There was a lot of Arsenal moaning about timewasting which
was pretty groundless to be honest and how dare José get his head stitched up
and a bandage put on it. Wenger was
apparently at his moaning best after the game and it sounds like Ronald might
have pointed out that he’s always moaning and it all got a bit feisty. I have a feeling that the ‘first three goals
should have been disallowed’ shit from the St Mary’s game got right under
Ronald’s skin. Wenger blamed the ref for
the first three goals at SMS and he’s blaming the ref again today. He’s not blaming the fact that he had £200
million to spend in the last two transfer windows and he’s brought in one
outfield player who is a lightweight squad player. I feel that most of the Arsenal players arm
waving and moaning was down to the fact they weren’t winning and they were
copying their manager and blaming the ref.
For what it’s worth, I thought Lee Mason refereed the game
pretty well overall, especially in the first half. In the first 15 minutes of the second half he
seemed to give us nothing but otherwise I thought he was fair. Last year in this fixture we had Andre
Marriner and every time Big Vic went near Cazorla, Ramsey or particularly Sanchez, they hit the deck
and got a free kick as the ref totally bought the dive or got ‘big club at
home-itis’. For example, last year at
The Emirates, Jack Cork was kicked out of the game and the next 6 weeks of the
season by a Ramsey tackle and the ref didn’t even give a free kick. Wenger doesn’t mention this of course, just
what goes against his side.
It really is a huge point for us. I heard an interview with Eddie Howe a couple
of weeks ago when he said that you have to respect every point in the Premier
League, so if you’re level with a few minutes to go, especially away from home,
your first priority is ensuring you don’t lose. He’s dead right. A goal for them at any time in the second
half and there looked no way that we would score. Mané has no confidence, Long was working too
far away from the danger zone and everyone else seemed frightened to
shoot. There was Juanmi of course... why
bother. He’s fucking useless.
Ten points out of the last twelve and up to 7th
in the league, above Liverpool on goal difference, nice! Next up is a chance to consolidate that
against the team immediately above us and five points ahead, West Ham. Five clean sheets in a row anyone? Don’t bet against The Wall.
.
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