Last night, we just didn’t do enough. A 0-0 draw is not the worst result in the world but it is the lost opportunities that frustrated more than anything. We almost totally dominated Milan, and we had the perfect opportunity to finish them off at home before a really tough game at the San Siro … and we failed.

The game was decent, and our midfield was superb, while our defending was even better. The finishing was off for the night, and I don’t just mean Adebayor. Eduardo, Fabregas, Eboue, Walcott all had very decent chances that were wasted, or fluffed to be more accurate. If I remember correctly, every single shot we had was at the same exact spot, almost straight at the keeper. That was very frustrating!

Our last chance of the game pretty much sums up our night. In the 93rd minute, Adebayor ’s header from less than 5 yards away hit the crossbar.

Contrary to what I said in the preview of the game, Milan’s defence proved to be the strongest part of the team yesterday. Nesta and Maldini were brilliant in annoying Adebayor and not giving him enough space. Thats not to say we didn’t create openings, because we did … quite a few. Any other day and we would have scored at least 2, but that wasn’t the case last night.

Pato was ineffective alone against Gallas and Senderos, who came in for the injured Toure. In the second half, Pato gave up on breaking the back two and started drifting right and left and was again faced with Clichy and Sagna who did well defensively and offensively. In midfield Hleb did a brilliant job in containing Pirlo, who’s only contribution as far as I can remember is two wasted long distance free kicks. Flamini and Fabregas handled Kaka perfectly, although Fabregas had a poor game yet again going forward. On the other hand, Eboue had an excellent game going forward, created a few chances with decent crosses and maneuvering his way into the area more than once.

It was a joy watching the Gattuso Flamini contest. Both of them were like machines, moving around everywhere, and surprisingly Gattuso had most passes in Milan and not so surprisingly covered more ground than anyone.

There are two positives we should take from the game -

1. The main positive about the game is that our boys can feel confident in their abilities ahead of the away leg in two weeks time. They know that they totally outplayed a full Milan side and that can only add on their confidence and desire.
2. Milan didn’t score, which is always good as a home team. The away goals could prove decisive in Milan.

We need to forget the game and focus on the upcoming game against Birmingham on Saturday. It is more important than the Milan game and is 1 of the remaining 12 games for the title race.

A good win yesterday against Blackburn in what ended up being a pretty comfortable game. Senderos scored the first heading in a corner in the 3rd minute, and Adebayor ended it with a well taken goal in injury time. 2-0, job done, top of the league with a five point lead.

Adebayor’s hot scoring streak continues with his 11th goal in 2008 in only 8 games. He has averaged almost 1.4 goals a game this year!! I can guarantee you there is no better striking rate in Europe in 2008. I think his new song gives him confidence, he has scored in every game since the song was created. His 2nd goal was very well taken, showed how confident the guy has become.

Blackburn didn’t really trouble us, and were very toothless to be honest. Without Savage (who is now Derby’s captain), Dunn, Pederson, Samba, Nelson, Derbyshire, and a couple more, they were very tame. I think there were less fouls in that game than any other previous game against Blackburn, which gave us a chance to play our game and create chances.

Hleb dominated the game and was man of the match by far. Fabregas, Sagna, Flamini, and Adebayor also had good games. The biggest surprise was seeing Gilberto play as well as he did. I thought he was very sharp, missed a few passes but made some nice ones too, and stopped their game once or twice too. Hopefully the international game during the weekend with Brazil helped him a bit at least regain some of his lost confidence or self belief.

In all honesty, before this season started, I didn’t think that we will be able to challenge for a top two spot. I’ve never been convinced with Liverpool, so I firmly believed that our main challenge would be to maintain 3rd place. Throughout the season I have been expecting a downturn in result and still didn’t think we would win the title. This doesn’t mean I don’t believe our squad is good enough. On the contrary, I believe if we keep our players, we should be considered CL contenders every year in a year or two from now. It was just a matter of not having enough players who can cope with the pressure. Not many of our squad can say they have won much silverware in their career, that is the only reason I thought it would take another year or two for this young team to gel together and to mature.

After today’s win, my eyes are finally open to the possibility of winning the title. It is definitely not over yet, but we have good chance if we continue to do well. The winner will be determined mostly by our game away at Old Trafford on April 12th. Manchester United’s schedule looks to be easier than ours, especially with their Liverpool, Arsenal, and Villa games all being at home. We play Chelsea and United away, which are very important games in deciding the title. I think the winner needs to surpass the 90 point barrier considering the upcoming games.

Of our remaining 12 games, we have 5 at home and 7 away. Villa, Boro, Liverpool, Reading, and Everton will be played at home, and we really need maximum points from these to win the title. Away, we play Birmingham, Wigan, Chelsea, Bolton, Man Utd, Derby, and Sunderland. This will be a very close race to the title!

This is an excellent excel file created by Aidan O’Byrne to try and predict the premiership run-in by predicting the results.

Premiership title run-in calculator

(right click and save)

Great 3-0 win against Fulham on Saturday. Back to basics, playing our usual stylish sexy football, and scoring two somewhat unusual goals for us.

Adebayor scored two towering headers in which he jumped around 30 feet in the air and placed the ball perfectly both times. The first was a cross from Clichy on the left, the second was Hleb from the right. If you read my post about last game, my main concern and criticism was that we did not utilize the width of the field and kept it very narrow, which made it pretty easy for Birmingham to defend. I’m glad Wenger read my post and told the boys to push forward and use the flanks! We have Adebayor and Eduardo, who are both excellent headers of the ball, why waste that perfect opportunity. Also, Wenger pushed Adebayor in the middle apparently, and after the game said something which was great to hear and I hope all the Adebayor haters read it -

“He is also the main striker now and he gives us an added dimension with his headers.”

Its official, Adebayor is the main striker. I really doubt a fit Van Persie would take over that mantle, and with Eduardo playing well, it would be hard to see where Van Persie would fit in the starting 11. Wenger could use him like Van Basten does on the right wing, but I don’t see that happening. He would probably fit in better in our 4-5-1 formation just behind Adebayor, where Hleb plays.

Rosicky scored the 3rd after some nice play by Eduardo and the game was quite comfortable. Our away support was incredible, the best I’ve ever heard (on tv). The one song that kept going on forever after his two goals was Adebayor’s, here it is -

Well done everyone! Ade, the team, the fans … thumbs up to everyone!

Just a couple of notes on the game. First, although we did play well, Fulham were absolute shit. Almunia had 0 shots on goal all game. Second, and more important in my opinion, we won comfortably and played well even without Fabregas having a great game. He was ok at most, and we still dominated, this is always a good sign!

Ok enough about the game. Now to the ‘other things’ section of the post.

Loanees and Ex-Gooners watch -

This has been a good week for gooners and ex-gooners apparently. Pires was excellent in Villareal’s 3-0 over Valencia, and scored a beautiful goal. Henry scored a header for Barca! Merida debuted as a loanee at Real Sociedad and apparently did very well according to some reports out there as they won 3-1. Carlos Vela our Mexican wonderkid also had a good day, scoring for Osasuna their second goal -

Thats it for now, today will be the first piece of action for our boys in the African Cup of Nations as Ivory Coast meet Nigeria in what is considered the game of the first round with so many quality names - Toure, Eboue, Y Toure, Drogba, Kalou, Yakubu, Martins, Obi Mikel …. and so on.

Very weird game.

As usual, Wenger fielded Arsenal’s second team for the first leg of the Carling Cup semi (also known as the Kiddy Kup). Van Persie was one surprise inclusion, but in my opinion that only means that Eduardo now is our first choice starter ahead of him, and rightly so.

The game was quite shit to be honest. We played even worse than we did against Burnley earlier this week. Any decent team could and should have ended the first half at least 3-0 up, so good thing we were only playing Spurs. The first half could be summarized as Berbatov vs. Arsenal defenders. Berbatov won that battle easily, all his through passes were perfect, and our defenders looked like Benny Hill video at times.

Berbatov is quality. He also is smart enough to know that he is better than Spurs, which makes me worry about seeing him in a ManU or Chelsea shirt next season.

Jenas scored from an easy counter attack. Not much else to say about the first half. Second half started with Eduardo and Sagna replacing the ineffective Van Persie and the woeful Djourou. Up till the last 15 minutes, we were lucky to be only 1-0 and it seemed like there was no chance for us to score. Then out of nowhere, Eduardo slides the ball between two defenders and Theo, who tried to kicked the ball but the defender got it first and kicked it up to hit Theo’s hand to roll into the goal. A real magic ‘touch’.

After that it looked like the team believed they could get more out of the game and went for it, while the hair stylely challenged Defoe showed why they don’t mind seeing him go with an easy miss.

To summarize the game, the midfield was shit, defence was a bit less shit until Sagna came to the rescue, and our front two carried the team just like they did the past two games.

The one major positive about the game is how Hoyte surprised me with his excellent performance at CB. Last year, I always had him and Flamini as two players who are below Arsenal’s level technically and didn’t expect either to last with for long. Flamini blew us away with his performances this season and proved me wrong, and today Hoyte was exceptional after Sagna came on to cover the RB position and Hoyte went central to replace Djourou.

The most important thing about our result is that Spurs are still almost 9 years without a win against us, and 15 years away from their last win at our home. The streak continues.

Player Ratings -

Fabianski - 5 - A few shaky moments in not going for the ball when defenders expected him to do so, and that one corner he flapped.
Traore - 6 - Did well in controlling the overrated Lennon, and unlike last game, actually held his position well.
Senderos - 7 - Solid defending, did very well.
Djourou - 4 - Nightmarish game for young Johan. He is much better than he showed.
Hoyte - 8 - Average first half at RB, a revelation in the second as CB.
Diaby - 4 - Another bad game. Read rating from last game.
Denilson - 6 - Not bad, not great. Some decent passing, some misplaced passes. Average.
Gilberto - 5  -Started off the game looking like a blind man, improved as the game went by.
Walcott - 6 - Average game, he needs to improve his final touch and decision making. Did well in finding space to score.
Van Persie - 6 - Did well in the first half, nothing spectacular though.
Bendtner - 9 - OK first half, much better second half when Eduardo came on. Those two look great together!
Subs -
Sagna - 8  - How anyone could fit it in so quickly with a team is beyond me! Great buy!
Eduardo - 9 - Great assist again. Great overall play. Great buy again by Wenger.

Man of the match - Bendtner again.

Goals from Eduardo and Bendtner saw us brush aside Burnley in a comfortable(ish) 2-0 win at Turf Moor to qualify to the next round of the FA Cup.

The game started well with both sides creating chances. Burnley made their intentions clear in the first 5 mins when the ball was headed off the bar. They were there to play football instead of have 11 players defending or trying to rough things up. In our first real attack, Toure flicked the ball forward, and Eduardo ran through and finished again very coolly. It went back and forth after that, with Burnley playing some good football.

Burnley ended up with more corners than we did, and they had 6 shots on target to our 8. These stats show that it wasn’t as easy as many expected it to be. This doesn’t mean it was a tough game by any means, it just wasn’t that easy.

In the second half, Burnley had a player sent off for a late tackle on Gilberto. To be fair I think the red was harsh. Yes, it was late, but it wasn’t malicious and was one footed, definitely a yellow card. Anyway, a few mins after that, Bendtner finished off a great passing move with Eduardo giving him the final pass in the perfect spot.

The Eduardo / Bendtner partnership looks very promising. They both run their socks off, always involved, and seem to have a nice understanding creating some nice chances with fancy one two passing. Senderos had a good game back, while the same can’t be said about Traore, Diaby, Eboue, or Gilberto. They all had a below average game, Diaby especially, who was great when the ball was in his feet, but absolute crap whenever he tried to get it to someone else’s feet. You know what else was absolute crap? That pitch. Ridiculous! Almost as bad as Chelsea’s from last year.

The one revelation from the game has to be that Eduardo is in fact human! He missed an easy chance! I think this was his first miss of the season. It was a bit reassuring to see that he is a mere mortal.

Player Ratings -

Lehmann - 6 - Not much to do to be honest
Sagna - 7 - Solid as usual
Toure - 7 - Nice assist for the first goal and did well overall
Senderos - 7 - OK first half, very good second half. Good game to come back, not too much pressure, good for confidence.
Traore - 4 - Very poor game. Was out of position most of the time he was on the pitch. The main reason Senderos had an ‘OK’ first half was that he was going back and forth covering the left side that Traore left exposed. Again, if you had a choice about which game you’re going to have a 1 off shit game, this would be the perfect one.
Eboue - 5 - I’m a big fan of Eboue. I think he gets more criticism from fans than he deserves. That said, he had a poor game. Did well until he got near the box, then just kept the ball waiting for 2 defenders to surround him.
Denilson - 6 - Had a quiet game. Tried to make something from his time on the pitch with 3 shots that were off target, but never too threatening.
Gilberto - 5 - His first half was ridiculously poor. Looked like he was just kicking the ball randomly at times, improved in the second.
Diaby - 4 - It would’ve been a 3 if his pass for Eduardo in the second half didn’t go through. Nothing went right for him today. He always strikes me as a player who tries to impress rather than win the game. He is much better than he showed today.
Eduardo - 9 - A very cool finish and a great assist for Bendtner’s goal. He also had 2 or 3 other chances and was always threatening.
Bendtner - 9 - The boy was immense today. Took his goal very well, and was involved constantly in creating chances and defending when needed. I think he had the ball more than any other player on the pitch. I just hope he still has enough in the tank for the Carling Cup game after this performance.

Man of the match - Bendtner.