No reviews after the Swansea game and the Dortmund game means that this post will be an eclectic mix of the best of both reviews in the melting pot of a heady concoction that stirs the footballing soul in a delightful pot-pourri of analysis and synthesis resulting in an exciting mixed bag of veritable and multiple proportions. Meaning I am writing two reviews in one post as I have been a lazy bum over the past week. It also gives me the opportunity to make two bad puns in one title that works/fails on multiple levels.
If I were a zonal marker I would consider the Arsenal Swansea game much more interesting in terms of tactics than the Dortmund one because for the first time in quite a long while Arsenal deviated from a clear 4-3-2-1 kind of formation to some weird line up that looked 4-3-3 when Theo wasn't blindly running into corner flags. It looked 4-3-2----------1 when he did run into corner flags. But as an Arsenal fan I still consider the Arsenal Swansea game more interesting for two reasons neither of which involves drawing formations on chalkboards: one, I was at the Emirates (mandatory red card holder mention) and two, we won, after some 23 years I think.
First impressions about the first timers. Arteta compensates in his strength and physicality what he lacks in passing vision and technical quality compared to Cesc. That is not to say he is bad at passing, but just that where he falls a bit short in finding that clever ball he makes up by asserting himself more strongly in the midfield, and that is a quality our midfield has lacked in the past. Mertesacker, I thought, was more jittery than I expected him to be against an opposition like Swansea. With all due respect to them, they are just a promoted team whose strikers you would expect to be put in the pocket by someone as experienced as Merte. He was too often caught by the ball above the defence. He turns around like a sloth after ten pints of beer, and this sloth impersonation could cost us a loth when EPL's pacy roadrunners attack us. Benayoun was active, agile and mobile when he came on late as a sub (read: ran around a lot).
Arshavin looks like he is returning to his Anfield 4-4 days and put in a good performance along the wings. We have a joke in D7 that Arshavin plays only for the stats and once done he just sulks around. Last year during long spells of the season he was absolutely abysmal. His touch was poor, his tackling was poor, his passing was poor, even his running was below poverty line. But it was during the great depression times that he had the best stats in the team! Some good number of goals and assists. It was like that during the Swansea game. We attacked and we attacked but the goal came out of a goalkeeper error. Their goalkeeper rolled the ball onto one of their defenders who had his back turned towards the ball. The ball bounded off him and fell lightly in front of Arshavin who curled it first time into the net from a tight angle. His stats had improved and he resigned himself to sulking on the left wing. 1-0 to Arsenal.
Not exactly a morale boosting victory, but definitely something that will go under the 'feel good' heading in the team spirit balance sheet. Sheet, that was an accounting metaphor. The other author's Swiss Franc joke has muggufied the blog! Yo momma is so fat she is as fat as Puyol. There, the balance has now been restored.
Next came a trip to Borussia to play against Dortmund, or was it a trip to Dortmund to play against Borussia? Basically, we went to Germany to play against some Germen. And boy were they eine paine in der arse. You don't become champions in Germany just by having truckloads of TV rights money coming just to you like some clubs in liga do. Borussia Dortmund showed their quality. You can understand why Wenger was chasing this 19 year old Mario Gotze, centre midfielder for Dortmund. He was extraordinary on the field that night. His passing and movement is amazing and dare I say almost like Cesc. Gotze was chief provider and playmaker for them and clearly the brain of the team. Almost all of their clear cut chances came from his delicate passes threaded through our defence. He could be a perfect addition to the Arsenal squad and with many years ahead of him he would be an extremely useful long term signing. My only suspicion is he might have had something to do with the killing of Gandhi. Only time tell.
It did not come us a surprise that we were attacked in waves right from the start. But what did come us a surprise was the resilience with which we defended. It is almost a taboo to commend an excellent defensive performance given the holier-than-thou status attached to 'attacking play' but you can afford to not defend only if you are Barcelona. Then you have Busquets to roll around, Alves to be play act and Pique's ugly face among other things like Messi-get-out-jail-free card. The Arsenal back four deserved praise for having kept the attackers at bay. Mertesacker's Bundesliga experience came of use and with his towering presence at the helm of our defense we looked a lot more brickwally than houseofcardy at the back. Kos was immense and so was Sagna. Gibbs continues to be error prone and it was telling for in the first half most of their chances came from our left. Our goal was all RVP. Class finishing from the captain and an excellent ball from Theo, the only thing that he did in the whole game. In games likes this it is important the team sticks together and defends as a group, and RVP led from the front. He often tracked back lending a helping foot to the midfielders. Song was absolutely awesome. What a terrific defensive midfielder! But for him our back four would have been prised open sooner than later. Their goal came from a volley that, as Pat Rice said, if you had hit the same shot 50 times would have gone to the Z row 50 times. But I suppose they deserved the goal.
Overall, the team looked like it had added a new dimension to its existing technical quality: hard work. I would love to elaborate on that but it is now time to go watch Arsenal Blackburn at a seedy bar nearby. In any case this post has gone on for longer that I wanted it to.Dort mund me saying, but that has become quite a magnum opus of a post.
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