Right where do i start? i guess i can start by saying if you fail to plan, you unwittingly plan to fail...Its only in the realms of dreams or perhaps the movies where you can find 300 brave warriors attempt to overcome an army of thousands in a battle, relying only on their sheer fighting skills and of course the motivation from their *cough* Mad LEADER. Who tries to spur them to do the impossible inspite of the fact that they are desperately outnumbered. Before this game many of us feared the worst, not because Aston Villa are world beaters, but because we were going into a new season with the same side that barely scraped 4th place last season ,only this time they are now considerably weaker in every department! On our part, the effort was there, the desire was there, but sadly the Quality was missing and i'll tell you this, if we are finding it hard to produce the quality to beat Aston Villa at our home, then our problems are bigger than we thought.
The starting line up was Szczesny,Sagna,Mertersacker,Koscielny,Gibbs,Wilshere,Ramsey,Chamberlain,Rosicky,Giroud,Walcott. Santi started on the bench ostensibly for reasons not unconnected to his long flight from Equador. On the basis of the above lineup you could be forgiven to believe the 3 points would be in the bag. We took the lead in the 6th minute courtesy of Giroud after a good Chamberlain break from the left flank. Aston Villa in their classic pattern, having gone behind, simply soaked pressure and looked to hit us on the break. We looked fairly comfortable in all but still managed to cause ourselves trouble with some unconvincing defending. One of such from Szczesny saw him suddenly possessed by the Demon that tormented Almunia in an arsenal jersey, when he left his line to fumble a simple clearance. How we ended up not conceding then was a miracle. The equalizer when it materialized was borne out of some equally naive defending, Agbonlahor was allowed to run at the heart of our central difference and was only stopped in the box by Szezcesny, illegally. The referee pointed to the spot for a penalty, and whilst Szczesny made the initial save from Benteke, he couldn't stop the Villa forward from tucking in the rebound. The half ended in a stalemate and even then, the Boos rang out clearly from the stands.
After we began well in the 2nd half, two incidents i feel turned this game on its head, first was the debatable penalty decision resulting after the ball was stolen from Carzola in midfeild, the annoying Agbonlahor raced into the box again evaded Koscielny and fell under his perfectly timed tackle.The 2nd was Koscielny's eventual sending off. If there was ever a game where we needed all the luck in the world to go for us it was this one but the reverse was the case. Benteke scored the penalty to take Villa 2-1 up and and that point we were really struggling. In fairness, i think the ref has some explaining to do because how is it that the linesman closest to the action can point for a corner, while he being a fair few meters behind can overrule him and give the penalty? very dubious. Then as if that wasn't enough, we got reduced to 10 men when Koscielny got his marching orders for a foul on Weimann. I cannot describe the sympathy i felt towards the players on the pitch at that time. What a mess this was turning into..Teammates were being clattered allover the pitch, Gibbs had sustained a deep face cut and had to be changed, Sagna was limping, Ramsey too, it was almost hard to watch. They had tried to come back into the game with Rosicky who had a good game coming close twice, only just prevented by a combination of poor finishing and Good Goalkeeping by Brad Guzan. By the time Luna buried the third goal, the Game was already lost. Our humiliation was complete and the stands were already Empty.
I mentioned in the preview that we may be pushing our luck with this squad, and it seems it ran out on us with a vengance against an ordinary Villa side. Now we are injury hit in heaven knows how many places with a Champions League tie to face on Wednesday. We have to pick ourselves up though and find some way to be ready. Failure to do so will make all the hard work we put in to finish 4th last season such a massive waste. Over to you Arsesne, you made this Bed so enjoy the sleep.
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