After the fall of the Red Devils at their Hades home called Old Trafford, following Newcastle’s 1-0 win in the on going David Moyes United Promo, all eyes shifted to the blue duo of Manchester City and Chelsea. Sky Blue City could only manage a point from Southampton but Chelsea and Jose Mourinho were poked by stoke. A last minute goal by Oussama made the Special one very ordinary.

Fast forward to Sunday, Arsenal to host Everton. Buoyed by their exploit at Old Trafford, Everton were determined to make positives from the Emirates. Arsenal were licking their lips with the prospect of going 7 points clear of the chasing pack.

Stand up for the Champion

Sagna couldn’t make the list due to his injury worries and thus Jenkenson had another start. Kos and Per bossed the back with Gibbs returning to the fold. Arteta, Ramsey, Wilshere, Cazorla and Ozil were the midfield generals and Giroud was left upfront.

Everton started at a frantic pace, highly energized and not lacking in pace. with no clear chances, mostly due to the ruggedness of the back 4, Szczesny never had a ball to save in the first 25 minutes. Koscienly made a lot of interception, so did Gibbs and Metersacker with the RB being the weak link where the toffees majored.

it took the gunners 35 minutes to muster a near chance and when the chance came, Howard was so big that Giroud and Ramsey couldn’t get past the American. Arsene wenger would go on to rue those chances especially with the way the game ended. Ramsey had another chance that Howard parried to corner.

The gunners came smoking in the second half but the game was a battle of the midfield with over 48% of the actions in the middle of the pack. Up came the Wenger changing time 70min and in came the trio of Rosicky, Walcott and Flamini.

You could see Flamini’s dexterity, agility and zeal for the Arsenal has he want about conducting play like the Mayor of London. 9 minutes after coming in, Rosicky lofted in a pass over the Everton defence for Walcott to nod in to the path of our only Striker, Giroud. The Frenchman fluffed his chances and had Ozil to thank for sparing his blushes. The German wasted no time in putting the ball into the net.

The gunners were only up for just 4 minutes as Defeulou curled a super goal beyond Szczesny’s reach from inside the box. The trajectory of the ball from that angle needs to be studied by great physicists. It was a sucker punch to the jubilations by the red half of London.

Olivier Giroud would have had his name on the back pages if his last minute shot that rocked the post had found its way in. The whistle blew and the spoils was confirmed shared. One points gained or 2 points lost.

Takes:

  • Koscienly has a lot of energy. His pace is second to none in the defense and he won virtually every tackle he went for. Lukaku was kept silent thanks to our kos.
  • Arsenal lost concentrations in numerous occasions but were lucky not to have been punished by it. Arteta, Wilshere were culprits but Szczesny and the back 4 were on hand to snuff of the threat.
  • Arsenal lacked pace when they had the ball unlike their Everton counter part. even when Walcott came on, we rarely used his pace when we had the chance to catch Everton on the counter. When would we maximize our counters?
  • We need a better striker. we cannot afford to be missing half chances.

My Wenger’s quote of the day:

Look it was a good game and Everton played well. Overall it took us time to get into the game and in the first 25 minutes Everton started stronger than us. After that we had still three one against one with the keeper in the first half. And that’s the regret I have because we didn’t take our chances very well. The other regret I have is of course that we are caught back after being 1-0 up with seven minutes to go. But you have to give credit to Everton, they continued to play well and they always looked dangerous. We played against a very good side, in the end we’re a bit disappointed to get caught back with a 1-0 result but overall it’s still a point.

We have a date with Spurs with the chicken as the menu at the Emirates in view of the FA Cup. I hope the players recover for the trip to Naples.

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