For once, Arsenal were reliant on RVP

ARSENAL 1 EVERTON 0

FROM GOODPLAYA AT THE EMIRATES

THIS was the kind of occasion where one feels almost duty bound to say something stomach wrenching along the lines of: “On the day gods from Arsenal’s past gathered to commemorate the club’s 125th anniversary, it was fitting that divine intervention from a contemporary hero decided the game.”

So what of the game? Well, some people will say RVP dig us out the crap again. I’d argue that this was actually only one of a couple of times this season when you could really look at a game or incident and say that no other Arsenal player on the pitch or in the stands could possibly have scored that goal and that yes, that was the difference.

Overall I didn’t learn a whole huge amount new. I thought we dominated early on and missed some really presentable chances. RVP’s touch was a little off but otherwise it was a similar story as to recent weeks: Theo dangerous, Gervinho couldn’t finish a sentence, Ramsey sparky, Arteta solid, Song pretty decent. You know the spiel. I thought did fairly well, particularly late on and Rosicky was a good sub too.

One thing that was telling was that Ramsey and Arteta got early bookings and I felt that for much of the latter part of the game both appeared very wary of going into challenges for fear of a red card. I’d have subbed one of them mid way through the second half. It was telling that when we did introduce another central midfielder (Frimpong), he immediately won the kind of challenge that Ramsey and Arteta might have, understandably, shied away from.

Everton were good in an Everton like way: tough, organised, occasionally enterprising. But when you hear David Moyes bemoaning the fact they didn’t make the most of some decent crossing positions that kind of illustrates how near the goal they got: not very basically in short. Their sub of Distin for Saha was baffling, not least because they then went and enjoyed their best spell of the game.

Our goal really was very splendid and there ain’t a lot you can do to defend a goal like that. It was the kind of opportunity that most strikers would score once in a thousand times. RVP narrows those odds to around one in 20 and fortunately that one came up yesterday.

I’d better touch on the 125th anniversary celebrations. As has been pointed out elsewhere, that Henry’s statue pose is of that celebration against Spurs is pretty fine. One mistaken soul who should no better yesterday argued that goal wasn’t that special because he didn’t beat anyone. The point was he engendered such fear in the Spurs back line that he didn’t actually ever have to beat anyone.

My own view is that they’ve probably done enough Arsenalising of the stadium for the time being. Like a new house, it is great to get some things on the walls soon after moving in and we’ve now done that. But now feels like the time to make our own history at the ground and then display that.

A final note from yesterday’s anniversary celebrations: Robert Pires can wear an Arsenal scarf like no other man.

He actually made it look like a fashion accessory.

Which, as if my magic, brings me on to the time when I met him in London’s South Kensington. He’d just published the French version of his autobiography and a copy signed by the man himself seemed the ultimate present for my brother, a French language student at the time. Arsenal had been wretched the previous Saturday, which made for the perfect conversation starter for me with my A Level grade C in French (I hold arguably the unique distinction of an A in the oral and a U in the written, but there you go).

“Qu’est-ce qui s’est passé a Samedi?”

J’ai demande.

At this he blew out his cheeks and as they say, well, ca suffit.

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