Arsenal thoughts on the weekend by Sam P
Relief was the overwhelming sensation sweeping through Arsenal fans, the players and Arsene Wenger when Mark Clattenburg blew the final whistle at Selhurst Park on Saturday. The important thing was that all three points were heading to north London, but then there was quite a bit of concern from Arsenal fans that we had been hanging on and were lucky to get the win against a team we should easily beat.
First of all, we have seen in the Premier League all season that any team can beat any other. I don’t think it was so much a case of Arsenal being poor either, it was more that Palace were very good and had their tactics spot on to frustrate us. Alan Pardew said that it was their best performance since he took over and that spell includes wins over Tottenham and Southampton.
So maybe Arsenal fans should appreciate that we did well to beat a very good side and managed to dodge a very big bullet, unlike Man United, Chelsea, Spurs and Southampton.
Moving on to Monaco, it was a bit of a blow to see them get back to winning ways in the French Ligue 1 on Friday night, after a bit of a dip in form. But I don’t think we need to worry too much. For one thing they were pretty poor and their winning goal just before the end was a gift from a defensive error. And they also played the whole second half with 10 men and that may just have sapped their strength.
Monaco don’t concede many goals but they don’t play teams like Arsenal very often either. Don’t panic Gooners, we WILL be too good for Monaco on Wednesday.