Thursday, 20 February 2014

The positives out weigh the Negatives...on a night of rotten Luck

Mesut Ozil

Its nights like yesterday's that make me wish i wasn't a football fan. What had shaped up to be a pure spectacle of quality football turned into a farcical one sided charade. We began the game confidently and rattled Bayern Munich in the first 10 minutes of the game. Mesut Ozil then in one moment of pure skill won a Penalty for us after Fooling Boateng with a lovely turn. Unfortunately The Hero then turned himself to a Zero as he stepped up and Delivered a disappointing spot kick that his international team mate saved quite easily. One of my favorite bloggers http://www.arse2mouse.com/ usually says that football spins on very small margins. He explains that you may be watching a game and already developing an account of how you think things will play out...then all of a sudden boom! The game changes and you are left ripping up the previous script and re-writing a new one. In the light of last night's game the match spun on two moments..the first one was the penalty miss which i have just narrated above. The second one happened in the 30th min when after he met a lofted pass into our Danger area, Argen Robben was brought down in the box by Wojiech Szczesny. The pin drop silence that befell the ground as the referee flashed his Red Card and pointed to the spot was as palpable as it was indicative that this game had suddenly gone down south for Arsenal. Despite the miss by Alaba for the German team, the damage of facing this awesome force with just 10 men was already done. We managed to see out the first half without conceding but every Arsenal Fan must have known we faced a hellish 2nd half to come.

And so it proved. The match got reduced to a mockery of sorts. It became effectively a training session for Bayern. The stroked the ball everywhere within our half pinning us back. We defended heroically following everything, tracking everything and blocking any thing that moved. Arsenal are not used to this at the best of times and in the end Bayern found the breakthrough. Tony Kroos received a ball from left and proceeded to curl in a wonder strike past Substitute keeper Fabianski. It would seem like that was probably the only way they could have scored today..i.e something spectacular. We kept on doing a great job keeping them at bay but then in one strange moment we felt we could hazard a risk and get a shock goal back. Koscielny ventured forward for a freekick. It came to nothing, Bayern Attacked and Muller found space to nod in their 2nd. Game over!

the POSITIVES:

(1)We gave as good an account of ourselves in the first half as iv seen all season, that's obviously something to build on.

(2) We defended well for 70mins or thereabout, against a very good attacking force, but poor decision making by Koscielny to venture up leaving us exposed and a wonder strike by Kroos breached us.

(3)Now we can boldly say Ozil can't take penalties.

(4)The Ox and Sanogo where bright lights on a dull dreary night, and particularly Sanogo showed he can grow into a fine player for us indeed.

(5)When we attack with pace we can cause any team trouble, Bayern couldn't live with us in that first 10 mins. So we must now for the rest of the season imbibe this route going forward.

(6)We beat them 2-0 at their place last season. So based on that, this tie is far from over. 

NEGATIVES:

(1)We wanted so much to do well in this game as characterized by our brilliant start. It remains to be seen if our collective morale will be hit by this unfortunate loss or not. 

(2) We lost Gibbs to injury


We can't cry over spilt milk though and we have too much to lose in the season left that we must pick ourselves up and ensure we bounce back with 3 points against Sunderland at the Weekend. We can still win the League and must ensure that our heads stay up devoid of our fate in this year's Champions League.


2 comments:

  1. i cant find my old comments.

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    1. yes i got an alert of a comment at the weekend..but strangely enough,i can't say what happened to it

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