Arshavin’s excellent audition for the front man role. Report and player ratings.
ARSENAL 2 STOKE CITY 0
BY GOODPLAYA AT THE EMIRATES
WHEN wheeling out an Invincible for a wave to the crowd before a game, it’s all to easy to whimsically think “how we could do with him now”.
With Freddie Ljungberg yesterday there was never any danger of that. Don’t get me wrong, he was a very good player for us. But truth be told we’re hardly gagging for a slightly built 5ft 9ins attacking midfielder blessed with trickery rather than pace and the instinctive urge to drift in from the wings.
There were certainly no shortage of potential Freddie’s against Stoke. But crucially we had Comrade Emmanuel Eboue too, who offered welcome pace and directness down the right.
Not that he was the star of the show though. That was an honour shared by Thomas Vermaelen and Andrei Arshavin. The former decided he was the man to take charge every time Rory Delap took a long throw and because he did Stoke were utterly nullified.
The latter gave by far the most convincing audition we’ve seen to replace RVP as the lone front man. The irony was that despite his excellent goal, Arshavin’s finishing was actually uncannily off. Twice – once early on and once late on – he was played in only to be let down by the most untypical of heavy first touches.
The manager correctly noted that the chance he did take was probably the hardest. It was classic Arshavin, deliberately bouncing off the defender to give himself a tiny new angle with which to play with and slide the ball in off the post.
By then our number 23 had already won us a rare penalty. Cesc’s miss from 12 yards capped a frustrating afternoon for the captain, who often came off second best in midfield tackles.
But we can hardly complain about our captain taking responsibility from 12 yards. Just as we could hardly complain about a lack of midfielders in the box when Eboue blocked Cesc’s goal-bound effort on the line after Traore’s cross had deflected off the post.
There can be few greater strokes of luck in football than being spared conceding a goal by an opponent blocking a teammate’s effort on the line. Arshavin did it against Liege the other week and Bendtner painfully in the CL quarter-final against Liverpool two years ago. Can anyone remember us being the beneficiaries?
The second goal was classic Aaron Ramsey. Yes, he’ll give the ball away sometimes, but he’ll make things happen too.
All in all, this was no bad performance. Stoke didn’t get a sniff up front and while our finishing could have been better, we were a little unlucky not to be three up at the break.
In the pub after the game it was like pantomime. Chelsea scored. Boo. People realised it was an Adebayor own goal. Cheer. City equalise. Cheer. It’s Adebayor up the right end. Boo.
All good anyway and suddenly their lead looks a lot less big. But it’s Liverpool next week and then in one of the cruellest ever quirks of the fixture computer the extra round of games sends us to Burnley on a Wednesday in December. Great.
Still, this weekend was a good weekend where we did the important things well.
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