Fog is horrible.
Well, fog is something that you don’t really care for, don’t really have a clue why people fuss about it or why it even exists. That is, until you get stuck at an airport for 6 hours waiting for a 40 minute flight from Paris to London… Apart from a horrible time shift from landing at 9pm to landing at 3am, it’s not the best use of your time… Missing the evening slot at home to watch Match of the Day and write my Sunday evening blog post was the major loss… so as things stand, I still haven’t seen the highlights! Work today and ATP tennis at the o2 tonight, makes me wonder when I will be able to see the match…
But, in my absence, Arsenal managed to secure a fifth successive win to make it 15 points out of 15… which takes us to level on points with Chelsea, Liverpool and Sp*rs – which in all fairness, I couldn’t see happening after our incredibly bad start to the season.
Our line up was “the usual”, with the only difference being Koscielny to right back and Mertersacker to centre back.
Szcznesy
Koscielny – Mertersacker – Vermaelen – Santos
Arteta – Song
Walcott – Ramsey – Gervinho
Van Persie
The game itself, was open and it was an individual mistake from Mertersacker that allowed Norwich to go ahead, when he misjudged the flight of the ball and failed to clear his lines. That issue aside, he had a decent game. But for us, we have a level of confidence and the mercurial Gervinho was the culprit who missed loads of chances… but created two for Van Persie to score, taking the Ducthman’s tally to a million goals this season… but more vitally, the three points were ours!
Last week, Robin Van Persie was full of praise for Theo Walcott and this week, post Norwich, Theo has been talking about the captain and the synergy between the two players:
“We just love playing together. Over the past few years I have had my injuries and he has had his so we have not been able to sustain a run of games together. But this year you can see signs that we just know where each other is going to be on the pitch. To be honest it makes it is easier for both of us. Robin is one of the best strikers in the world right now and a great leader too. But then the whole team is gelling now. On the second goal you could see there was a lot of movement not just with the ball but without it. We were creating space for players and a lot of us are in form at the moment. And of course it is easier when we are winning. If we want to climb up the table then, no disrespect to Norwich, but we should be coming to places like this and winning,” he said. “I did not think we deserved to be 1-0 down but they closed us down well. It was important to get the goal back before half time and we played some beautiful football.”
We have three home games next – Dortmund on Wednesday and Fulham on Saturday. Personally, I don’t care about the Carling Cup – despite the insistence that it could be our only chance of winning a trophy… we can’t compete in four competitions – we found that out gruesomely last season. We need to concentrate on the league, the Champions league and the FA Cup… so the third game, Man City at home in the Carling Cup can be one for the kids.
Dortmund on Wednesday and Fulham on Saturday are two games that we just must take maximum points from. The destiny of both those competitions is still in our hands…
Til tomorrow, adiós…
