Arsenal winning despite lousy luck is a HUGE plus point

After a few weeks when Arsenal suffered from the usual November blues with nothing much going right for the Gunners except that unexpected and probably undeserved late equaliser at Old Trafford to stop Man United beating us again, Arsene Wenger would have been hoping for some rare good luck today when Arsenal played host to AFC Bournemouth.

Well it is safe to say that he did not get his wish, because once again things seemed to conspire against Arsenal and the rub of the green was certainly on the side of the visitors from the south coast. Maybe it is more accurate to say that the ref was on their side because he had an awful game. It did appear that every bounce of the ball went against us as well so I am very relieved that we actually got the vital win.

The biggest of the decisions was that penalty to gift the Cherries an equaliser when we had taken the lead through Alexis Sanchez capitalising on a defensive error and were clearly on top. It was a coming together at best and the replay showed it was really just a dive from Wilson but the ref gave the spot kick and booked Mustafi for a pretty normal complaint just to rub salt into the wound.

An even worse decision for me, although it did not have the same impact, was when he didn’t book Smith for a much more vocal bit of arguing after a clear yellow card tackle, but that was typical of the man in black today. We cannot blame him for the early injury picked up by the unlucky Debuchy but it just shows you how our luck is going at the minute and you have to feel for the Frenchman who had played really well up to that point.

Thankfully the players dug in and in a really difficult situation managed to stop the buoyant Bournemouth team from pressing their advantage and then creating the clear cut chance for Walcott to put us back in the lead. This was by no means a fluent performance from Arsenal but it was a game that we had to win and the fact we did that despite everything going against us is a huge plus point, don’t you think?

Bob.