Stupid Sky telecast rules meant that I had to catch Arsenal's games on dodgy pixellated internet streams with Urdu commentators spitting into their mikes. Khuda hafiz, even in the best of times my knowledge of Urdu is sketchy, but it was even more confusing when in the first half Arsenal were playing left to right. High resolution pixels like those on shady streams have a tendency to make every player on the pitch look like a slightly modified version of Theo Walcott, so I was left watching a team that among many other Walcotts consisted of a black beaded hairstyled Walcott, a dyed hair Walcott, tall left footed Walcott and a Walcott look-alike Walcott. Walcotts on the bench, Walcotts on the sidelines, Walcotts in the crowd. Walcott walcott everywhere, not a.. okay you get the pixel.
The game as such was nothing to write home about (quite like the previous games, which is why I haven't been blogging okay ah). The usual Arsenal 4-2-3-1 mightily steamrolled right through the bus that Villa were just reverse gearing into position. Except it was one of those used Ashok Leylands with missing parts and made of paper. Right from the word go Arsenal were on the front foot, effortlessly keeping possession and pressing hard when they didn't have the ball. A lucky goal from Gibbs, a cool finish by Walcott after a perfect Songnandez pass and a blistering free kick from Arteta won us the game.
Spurs drew with Chelsea the day before and Liverpool lost their fixture against Wigan. This leaves Arsenal 5 points ahead of fifth placed Chelsea and 3 points ahead of fourth placed Spurs. With 7 games left in the league and games against Chelsea and Man City left to be played this run-in can turn out to be quite tricky. Spurs have no toughie/tricky fixtures and can be easily expected to scoop up all available points from now on stepping up the pressure on Arsenal. Although finishing in the top four would be an incredible achievement in itself given we were 17th in September, finishing third would be even more glorious. More so because of finishing ahead of Spurs. A few careless draws here and there and a loss to Man City could setup the penultimate fixture of the season - Arsenal vs Chelsea - to be a thrilling top 4 decider. Which sets me up to mention that I have tickets for Arsenal Chelsea. Booyakasha.
In other news, it turns out fellow la liga watcher (heh) Narz might have been right after all about Bilbao. I managed to catch only the first half of their game (on a dodgy stream this time with Italiano commentaryiano ) against walking billboards Gijon (only the crotch area of the players doesn't have a brand's logo on it, not that I was looking at the crotch area..) but what a difference from their Manu games. They were so sloppy in possession that it was as if they had 11 Cesc Fabregasses in their team. In spite of some poor play from the back four, the midfield duo of Munain and De Marcos along with Susaeta managed to string some flowing moves that at least sped the ball away into the final third when they finally ran out of ideas or legs or both. Quite undeservedly they were about to take the lead from a penalty right before the break when Munain argued with Llorente about who would take the spot kick and ended up winning the argument and losing the spotkick. I couldn't be bothered to go back to the second half abandoning Eddie Izzard who was going on about Achilles who had protected his heel with a fuckoff concrete block but as a result couldn't move and had then made into a hovercraft kind of thing to glide around only to go back home and reverse the suction on the feet to convert his heel into a vacuum cleaner. Bilbao second half. Meh.
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