At the final whistle Arsène turned to shake Di Matteo’s hand and you could feel the disdain, as has been commented many times before Arsène is an artisan, he expects both teams to at least try to win the game, Chelsea to his surprise didn’t or at least didn’t try by playing attacking football. Why it was a surprise I am not so sure, Chelsea have a history of coming to our place shutting up shop and trying to nick a goal on the counter.

Chelsea set up in what Sky ambitiously called a 4-3-3 but which the watching audience could see was a more pragmatic bus shaped formation last seen employed at the Bridge against Barca it was simply a case of driving it to the home of football, changing some wheels to preserve tyres before its long journey to the Camp Nou on Tuesday night to be positioned somewhere around the penalty spot. Thankfully they were without Drogba, so often a thorn in the Arsenal side, which meant that they used the unhappy Torres up front in the lone striker role, or in this particular formation the most advanced defender.

The game started slowly, Arsenal dominating possession as Chelsea dropped into their formation, conserving energy for any counter attacks and looking to put bodies in the way of all passing channels. On a couple of occasions in the early stages sloppy play from Ramsey and Song led to us losing possession deep in our third and gave Chelsea the encouragement to attack, solid defending by Vermaelen, Koscielny and Szczesny prevented any real danger.

The first clear cut chance fell to Arsenal, and Robin Van Persie, Theo providing a whipped in cross from a free kick that Vermaelen and Van Persie raced to meet, Robin won the race but could not find the back of the net with his touch. Had this goal gone in I think we would have seen a very different game. With the way Chelsea had set up it was imperative that we found an early goal which would surely have brought them out of their half a bit more.

Another chance from a set piece found Koscielny unmarked on the penalty spot, he flicked Van Persie’s delivery goal wards but it came back off the bar with no-one following in.

The half played out with only one more clear chance in front of goal, Song picking out Van Persie with a delightful chipped pass into the 18 yard box, Robin found space but could only fire his volley straight at the onrushing Cech.

The only other meaningful attack was a counter from a Chelsea corner, the ball eventually made its way to Oxlade-Chamberlain after some quick passing through the team from defence to attack but Bosingwa managed to recover and put the Ox in two minds as to whether he should drive for the box or cut back to find another pass, he chose the latter and Bosingwa read it well and managed to break the momentum and allow his teammates to get back.

Overall we lacked width, Sagna and Gibbs were clearly conservative, concerned that the pace of Kalou and Sturridge would be dangerous if they were caught upfield. Oxlade – Chamberlain was moving infield to find possession, and Theo was getting swamped whenever he got possession, and he had few passing options when he did have possession.

The second half started in a similar pattern to the first, Arsenal a bit sloppy in possession and almost trying to give Chelsea some encouragement to attack more to then give us more space, any danger was quickly averted by good solid defending on our part.

More chances came and went for Robin, the best of which saw him cut back twice before seeing his eventual shot blocked.

Gervinho, Santos and Diaby were all thrown into the action to try and find us a new dimension, Gervinho’s movement caused more concern to the static Chelsea defence, but they just pulled more midfielders into the back line to cope. Both Diaby and Santos retained possession better and tried to find some killer balls but to no avail.

Robin was also denied a penalty, a victim of recent refereeing blunders or too soft to be a penalty? For me Cahill puts his hands in Robin’s back and anywhere else on the pitch thats a free kick, also if an attacker does that to a defender in the box its a free kick, for some reason referees seem to believe that it has to be a bit more of a foul to be a penalty.

Another point earned on the way to Champions League qualification, a point made better by Spurs demise at Loftus Road. Three points would have been better but it wasn’t to be, several players are running on empty, and I wonder if rather than Podolski we need to find ourselves a 6ft 4 battering ram to throw on in games like this for the last ten to fifteen minutes.

Ratings

Szczesny – 7.5 – Strong commanding presence as we have come to expect from our Pole in Goal. Quick to arrive at a couple of dangerous counters, good handling and a couple of solid saves.

Gibbs – 7.5 – Showed what a good engine he has, up and down the flank, and kept Sturridge quiet all afternoon

Vermaelen – 7.5 – Solid performance from our number 5, good in the air, quick across ground and quick in the tackle.

Koscielny – 8 – A number of good blocks and saving tackles, unlucky not to score, brought possession out of our half well.

Sagna – 6.5 – Not the best game from Mr Reliable, didn’t seem to have the energy to get up and down as much as normal (suffering from his lay off with the broken leg?)

Song – 7.5 – Slow start (which seems to be part of his makeup) but eventually bossed the midfield area, and almost chalked up another assist with some through balls to Robin.

Ramsey – 6.5 – Our young welshman is struggling at the moment, but there is only one place you can recover your form and thats on the pitch, he doesn’t hide and towards the end of the game as he was pushed further up the pitch was beginning to produce more threat with attacking passes (especially when assisted by Santos and Gervinho and their movement).

Rosicky – 7 – An off day for the in form Czech but it was made clear that he has been suffering from illness this week.

Oxlade-Chamberlain – 6.5 – Hopefully some of the over exuberance about this young talent will start to ease now, he will undoubtedly be a talent in the future but he is still young and yesterday struggled to impose himself on the wily old fox Bosingwa.

Walcott – 7 – Struggled to find room to operate, lacked the support of Sagna which he needs to thrive. Unfortunately we won’t see Theo again until next season after pulling up with what looked like a hamstring pull.

VanPersie – 7 – An off day from the skipper, he had enough chances (half and better) to win us the game but failed to find his scoring boots today, kept getting on the end of through balls and crosses.

Subs:

Gervinho – 7.5 – Showed good movement played some good one touch pass and moves, was key in creating the chances towards the end of the game.

Diaby – 7 – Some touches and passes to remind us what he is capable of, a couple of tackles. He should probably get a 10 for coming through unscathed.

Santos – 7.5 – Would have raised a few eyebrows coming on in the attacking half of the pitch, but he has that side to his game and tried to find the passes to unlock the game.

Written by Gooner in Exile

Before we begin, may I firstly explain for the benefit of those of you not fluent in Swahili, that the title of todays’ post translates as: “No more worries”. The reason is simple. I have unearthed the solution to all our problems.

Let’s crack on. Right now we are third, but frankly it’s an only just, and that is because we have not been stretched by long runs in other tournaments and we have had an injury free season from our star pupil. To improve on this situation using the same formation, I believe we need more effective wide boys, and an improved back-up striker. This poses a number of problems. The back-up striker cannot be better than Robin, and while he must be an improvement on the current benchers, he still needs to be good enough to challenge Europe’s best defences in the event of a Robin injury. Improved wide boys will cost and present the same pecking order issues.

As if this is not enough of a headache, I would like us to play two strikers. Bad news: I say 4-4-2 not sexy enough. Good news: we can now buy a world class striker to play alongside Robin and this will make Robin happy while we the fans will see more goals.

Even better news, I know how we can adapt the system AND afford the new personnel. We invade Spain and grab a striker, then switch to 3-5-2.

Oh do stop rolling your sodding eyes and hear me out. I’m the bleeding expert here. Jeepers.

Look, due to the financial turmoil in Spain, the Telly Companies are offering 50% (tops) of the current fee they pay for Football Rights, and to make this situation even better for us, the top rate of tax is about to go through the roof. This means wages are going to be a massive problem for clubs. So, we get Benzema. Simple.

Now the 3-5-2. Brazil and Argentina won World Cups using it. Juventus are top of Serie A using it. And if that’s not convincing, Wigan use a version also.

Here’s the really good news. It will be a whole lot cheaper than bringing our current system up to scratch. Mert looks crocked, so my guess is he’ll be off. There is talk of Vertonghen. Guess what, the missing piece in our super footbally back three. He’s six foot, two and half inches. So he plays in the middle.

We no longer need new wide boys, and we certainly don’t need your M’Vila’s, as the DM role goes out of the window. Hooray for that.

(Changing tack for a moment, I’m watching the Bayern Madrid game as I write this. If I was the Ref, then before I blew the starting whistle, I’d jog on over to Ramos and show him a straight red. Save time. Just saying.)

Interestingly, I think all our Full Backs (Gibbs, Santos, Sagna and Jenks) are all better wide boys than our wide boys. They are also all better attacking full backs than defensive ones. In other words, they are perfectly suited to the 3-5-2.

Now the middle men. Again we are perfectly suited for this system. No more DM’s, just two good tackling/intercepting/footballing sorts and their back-ups. Jack, Arteta, Song, Ramsey and Coquelin. All completely interchangeable.

(Just back to this Madrid game. As the Ref, how about stopping the game in full flow. Walking up to Ronaldo and giving him a Red. “Ooooo, Weffewee” she’d say “what did I do?”. You could then just shrug your shoulders, roll your eyes about a bit and say “Dunno really. Just bored”.)

The middle man. Strangely this role becomes less pivotal than in the 4-3-3. In my little layout, I’ve put Ox centre. That’s because I like him and I’m in charge. However, here again, we have options. Rosicky and Diaby.

Up top, we have back up in Theo and anyone we can’t flog out of Bendy, Cham, AA and Gerv. We like our books to balance, Benzema won’t be free, and Robin needs a fatter envelope. Sorry, that’s life.

Finally, the great thing about this system is that it’s brilliant.

Written by MickyDidIt89

I don’t want to talk about the game, as the result turned the whole event into a disaster. Dropping three points for the second time in 10 days in the run-in is really poor form for a team hoping to consolidate a Champions League place. Losing Mikel Arteta to an injury that might keep him out of the team for the rest of the season is a double disaster.

Once Arteta went off we lost our brain. He does most of the thinking for the team, taking the ball out of defence, moving it on quickly and always available for the next pass. His reading of the game is excellent and without him – and it seems we don’t have a good substitute – we are now going to hope that the chasing pack also drop points.

Everyone was ineffectual in last nights game because yet again we forgot how to play simple football and attack at pace. Our mid-field held on to the ball for too long and allowed Wigan to be nicely set in their area to watch us pass the ball around in front of them without fear.

Wigan, on the other hand, knew exactly what to do with the ball and attacked us with pace and flair, ripping down our wings and getting their men forward at every opportunity. All credit must go to Martinez who set his team out to play their game and we just let them, sadly.

After Vermaelen brought the score back to 1-2 I really felt that we would still go on to win the game and it has to be said that Al Habsi made many fine saves in the first half to keep us out. However, the second half was really poor. There were no surprises from us, just the ‘same old same old’ passing, passing, passing. Wigan were quicker to the ball and we had no control of the game.

It’s all very well for Wenger to be angry with the team but could earlier changes have made a difference?

Is there something basically wrong with our play if we always have to look for the killer pass and not know how to keep it simple?

Why did we allow Wigan to dictate the play? We were the home team sitting in third place in the table and we let a team that has been fighting relegation overun us. We are a good team but somehow we were really rubbish last night.

No doubt, in the comments, there will be naming and shaming players who’s performances contributed to our poor display but basically we had no-one to hold the team together once Arteta went off and that’s the saddest part.

Written by peachesgooner

– 2 CL places up for grabs

– 4 teams in contention

– 5 games to play

– 29 days left of the season

Well it all comes down to a nervous final month of the EPL season.

Given our awful start to the season we find ourselves in a far more favourable position then we could have realistically hoped for, Arsène has almost pulled another rabbit out of his hat.

It’s (almost) a given that the 1st and 2nd places will go to Manchester so lets concentrate on the 3rd and 4th positions.

Arsenal’s run in:

Wigan (h)

Chelsea (h)

Stoke (a)

Norwich (h)

WBA (a)

Spurs’ run in:

Bolton (a)

QPR (a)

Blackburn (h)

Aston Villa (a)

Fulham (h)

Newcastle’s run in:

Chelsea (a)

Stoke (h)

Wigan (a)

Man C (h)

Everton (a)

Chelsea’s run in:

Newcastle (h)

Arsenal (a)

QPR (h)

Liverpool (a)

Blackburn (h)

Currently we have:

3rd Arsenal 64 pts.

4th Spurs 59 pts.

5th Newcastle 59 pts.

6th Chelsea 57 pts.

Only 7 points between the four teams with 15 points left to play for.

On paper Spurs have the easiest run in but QPR away will not be easy (as we found out) and Aston Villa away may prove to be a handful.

In their last 8 games Spurs have managed to win only  6 out of the 24 points – so let’s hope the rot has started to set in.

Newcastle has an onerous looking run in and may be fortunate to get  6/7 points out of 20.

Chelsea have by far the toughest remaining schedule and with FA and CL Cup commitments complicating things they may end up 5th.

That leaves the Gunners – last but never least – we should finish in a CL position and my earnest hope is that it’s the automatic 3rd spot.

What are your thoughts??

Written by GunnerN5