Evening All…
And what an entertaining game of football that was today. I know we lost 2-0, but in all honesty, I don’t feel too upset about our performance. We played well and pretty much dominating the game and it’s not the first time we’ve said that having left a ground on the losing end.
The line up today was:
Fabianski
Sagna – Squillaci – Koscielny – Clichy
Diaby – Song
Nasri – Wilshere – Arshavin
Chamakh
With a bench of Szcznesy, Eboue, Djourou, Denilson, Rosicky, Vela and JET…
Although we started this way, Wilshere played deep and Diaby and Song tended to go forward. I’m not sure if Song has been told to go forward, but it’s not preferable as his role in front of the back four is important – especially when our full backs go forward.
We did start the match the better team, creating chances immediately – and one golden opportunity in the first half dropping to Koscielny who headed over from about 2 yards – and there were many chances. At one point, I was wondering how we were missing all of these chances and a part of JAT’s blog yesterday came back to my mind:
Can we beat Chelsea? Of course we can. However I believe the key to our being successful against them is taking every goal scoring opportunity that comes our way as it is unlikely there will be many.
And that’s exactly what we didn’t do. Drogba scored the first with an audacious flick thing, and despite our efforts, Alex thumped in the second just before the end of the game. I’m sure Kieran D will give you his take tomorrow, but today was all about missed chances. Chamakh will definitely be wondering how he didn’t score. More possession, more passing accuracy and more domination counts for nothing – it’s the results that counts…
Arsene summed up the game:
“I just think we have made a demonstration that you can play well and lose the game. The game should have been over before we started it – we had the first two chances in the first minute and I don’t know how we managed to miss the header from six yards. At that level you get punished.
“I think we were a bit unfortunate as well because the first goal was a foul on Song from Ramieres – 100 per cent foul. After that we made a mistake that should not happen at the near post and Drogba took advantage of it. After the second half it was one-way traffic and in the last 10 to 15 minutes Chelsea were counter-attacking. But we missed too many chances at that level and in the final third you need to be more clinical offensively and defensively. We had a great team performance and great energy.
“You could see that Chelsea finished with cramps because they had to run a lot, so I give credit to my team. But we have to be more clinical to win titles – we can’t lose a game like that.”
And that’s a wrap… Kieran D will be back tomorrow with his views as we all try to move on… 7 points behind Chelsea and 5 points ahead of Liverpool, we’re 4th now – we have the talent, but we need to start getting points, points and more points…
Til tomorrrow…
