We’re top of the league!
…
At least till tonight. That’s fine though, this was a game we could have screwed up but didn’t. So i’m happy. Yay!
We’ll have to wait and see tonight when surprise leaders Leicester take on bottom half Chelsea (I know! This is a scenario that is so football manager…probably 2030 when Cesc Fabregas will be manager of Chelsea and legendary Mikel Arteta will be handling Leicester for his last season before he is due o take over at Arsenal). Well we’ll leave them to that.
We has a job to do against rock bottom Aston Villa managed by old Arsenal player Remi Garde. We never really did get out of first gear. Olivier Giroud gave us the lead inside ten minutes with his second penalty in a week. He sent the keeper the wrong way to notch up his 50th premier league goal for Arsenal. Now I know Giroud has received a lot of stick (some of it deserved) but when we slay him for doing wrong we shouldn’t begrudge him praise when he does deserve it and he does deserve it at the moment. He is in good form, scoring goals, playing well and helping the team in its cause.
Walcott won the penalty and he had a funny old game. I read somewhere that he had just 9 passes and he was on the pitch for over 60 minutes, yet he won the penalty for the first goal and was very instrumental in the second. I guess we just have to accept that that’s the kind of player Theo Walcott is.
Ramsey got the second goal and you’ve got to say, he really is enjoying life in the middle no? I understand him not being able to play there when Cazorla was fit but you can’t say he isn’t better there than on the right. He’s scoring, assisting and making things happen.
And speaking of assists, Ozil got his thirteenth of the season yesterday. He’s unbelievable our German isn’t he? He didn’t seem to do too much and he did seem knackered, then again, most of the team seemed to play with the handbrake on. Whether this was because of fatigue, or that maybe they knew not to overdo it after their midweek exertions or maybe it was on purpose that they just score early and remained disciplined, I don’t know.
It wasn’t a sparkling performance but it was effective and sets us up to be in a good place when we play City next. This is a game that isn’t scaring me at all when you consider how shit City has been recently and our better record against big teams and our personal record against them (We haven’t lost to City in four games I think) then you can maybe see why i’m quietly optimistic about our chances. We play Southampton who have been in bad form of late, so we have to fancy our chances there too. If we can remain consistent then we may well be top going into the new year and with all the players coming back…well, who knows?
Anyways, all in all i’m quite happy this morning. Petr Cech also equalled David James’ clean sheet record (really? David James?) and in way shorter time and will definitely create his own record that will hopefully take a while to beat.
Here’s to a great rest of the week!
Till later
