Arsenal got two first half goals and then saw out a spirited second half from Bournemouth to end the recent run without a win. The points were vital today and we now prepare for Leicester with renewed confidence and a better looking league table. But it was not the dominant performance and heavy scoreline that it could have been had we kept our foot on the gas after the two goals.
It was clear from the start of this must win Premier eague game that Arsenal were a team suffering a little bit with a loss of confidnce and a lack of goals. After an early chance created by Chamberlain, we saw a mix up at the other end with Ramsey and Gabriel nearly letting Bournemouth in.
Then we had a bit of fortune for a change, when referee Kevin Friend decided to show Flamini a yellow card for a two footed tackle when it could have been red. If anyone deserves a bit of leniency from the officials, though, it is Arsenal. We then saw 15 minutes or so that was very tight, with the home side pressing high and hard and the GFunners struggling to get our fluency and incisive passing going.
But we did get the early goal that we needed to settle the nerves after 23 minutes. Ozil nearly took the back of the net off from close range after Alexis Sanchez headed down a lofted pass from Ramsey. The change is our confidence lkevels was instant and the Ox made it two minutes later with a fine finish into the corner angled in from the right, assisted by Ramsey.
The nerves might have been back in force if Cech had not been alert just before the break when Monreal lost his man but the game was going to plan. After the restart, however, Arsenal fans were very glad that Cech had come to the rescue because the Cherries had the better of things.
For the first 10 minutes or so it was all Bournemouth and we just could not get out of our own half. Arsenal did improve and make a few chances but the shape of the second half was us defending against a hard working team that seemed to have more desire.
When Wenger brought on Coquelin for the Ox and then Gibbs for Alexis it was clear that he was determined to hold what we had and after the recent run that is understandable but it would have been better for momentum if we had carried on from the first half and scored more.
Beat Leicester next weekend, however, and we are bang in the title race again.
Decent Performance. Cech is a masterclass.
Our British core is so good at missing one on one chances(Ramsey today)
flamini in starting xi most mysterious questions
What’s the use of that elneny that Wenger signed
Obviously wenger doesn’t think that coqueling and elneny are ready yet. But obviously you watch them in training every day and know much more than he does?
Typical Wenger fanboy, if he isn’t ready by the time Cazorla is fit then why didn’t we sign a midfielder in the summer ??
dude its not the buys
its the attitude , the hunger of these players
so far this season we have beat…bayern , city, leicester. man u
with the same personnel
i question where there heads at. not wenger. the players.
We beat them to make a statement but once the statement is made we regress, it’s been that way for the past 5 years. Beat a big team, believe they can win the PL then relax because they assume every team will fear them. When we bought Sanchez our mentality changed, if we brought in a midfielder with his mentality imagine how much better we would be. We need leaders in attack, Ozil and Sanchez alone is not enough.
flam must have sold wenger some shares in his company. coq should’ve started: cant do worse than flam. we were soft in the center again. the old man has lost it. he has oppositional defiance disorder (ODD) : whatever most people say, he’ll do the opposite. ramsey unable to transition. good to see giroud a bit mobile. nervous game, but we needed a bit of luck, so hopefully now we can build.
he’s not being a typical Wenger fan boy…he’s just a guy who uses his brains before commenting.
the part of brain who tells you to obey, lol
The part of the brain that says having Arteta and Flamini is ok as long as they put in effort smh…
Flamini is going to cost us a game if he keeps starting. He was dreadful first half.
Very very lucky to stay on the pitch. Coquelin still looks off the pace but I’ll wager he’s back in starting line up Against Leicester. Thanks for filling in Flamini but time to get serious…
Try to keep up m8. Elmeny is not in the squad as his Mrs has just had a baby. Jeez, I suppose Wengers the causé fm that too!!??
Lol – haha – thumbs down cos I point out to the ‘one track’ idiots revelling in why Wenger played Flamini, don’t even know that that Elneny wasn’t in the squad….you’re preoccupation with slagging the manager is ridiculous and your lack of knowledge about AFC comical.
bigger mystery: why no coq? was he having a baby too?
@vish
decent performance?
hahahahahaha- DELUSIONAL MATE
Today was piss poor apart from 2 minutes.
do u not see how deluded some of our fans are bro? lol
bournemouth have the second worse home record in the league
and we were overrun, especially in midfield yet again.
our players attitude is shocking
thank u petr an ozil thank u alot
Totally agree with you.We should go and score more goals today.
Goal difference could be crucial in the title race.
Agree with you guys…
By the way, I’m still amused that we let Afobe go, while keeping Sanogo.
LOL…just saying.
By the way, Flamini was seriously LUCKY today.
It’s so interesting how divided Arsenal Fans are after this match.
Side 1: Though we won, I’m not happy with the performance.
Side 2: We won. Shut up and stop moaning.
Thumbs up for Side 1
Thumbs down for Side 2
I’ll be the ref.
Our player s attitude is shocking.. ARE YOU SEROUS? Your attitude is worse . We won away from home. We moved up on equal spurs in second place. And you are STILL moaning! !
so ur moaning about ppl moaning?
freud get in here now…we got a ‘live’ one
We put the performance in last week and got diddly squat, today we put the efforts on target and performed well enough to win deservedly ..Id call that decent too.
I bet the Bournemouth fans aren’t moaning as much as you. And they lost!!!!
and you know why…
cos there players give there all every game!!
every game- fantastic attitude from them
why would u complain about that- THATS ALL U ASK AS A FAN
we could learn from that- to happy in our 120 grand plus a week comfort zone
Muff if THATS ALL THE FANS ASK then why did people still moan after the boys played their hearts out against Southampton yet still came out with a goalless draw? Are you saying you’d prefer to put in a shift and draw than pick up a scrappy win at a crucial stage of the season? Today was about WINNING and that’s what the lads did. I’d take a scrappy win in every game for the rest of the season.
for a team that lost 5 1 to spuds.
Sanchez seems to have lost interest and regrets why he joined.
Cech MOTM
I think most Arsenal fans are just as soft as it can be. I watched Liverpool fans actually walk out of the stadium yesterday. I asked myself,,,,,can Arsenal fans do the same?. Never . We love to talk but no action. Wenger will forever screw us till he feels ok n retires.
Wenger told Arsenal.com.
“You always ask me, ‘Why do you not buy a big-name?’ but Leicester is a fantastic
example that football is not only about just spending the money.
“It’s the quality of work and it’s important to think that the quality of the work can get you there.
“Leicester are a very good example for our league. The advantage they have until the end of the season, apart from our fans and the City fans and Tottenham fans, is that the rest of the country is behind Leicester.”
Wenger gotta be one of the Biggest fooL from the planet of the Apes
He got 12good yrs to have produced a Leicester X12 Arsenal….and he screwed all the chances over
now he talking bull…… How much was vardy , mahrez, kante, morgan or even huth worth…..then compare em to how much he got squallici, denilson, chamackh, kim kardashian, sanogo etc not to mention the current crop of players prsently in the team doing absolutely nothing
He should be ashame to think he’s been vindicated by Leicester
Hahaha
that was one helluva stunt u pulled buddy!
I refuse to let this result deceive me .. No matter what comes the end of this season WENGER MUST GO.. He doesn’t care about WE FANS.. Just Analyse his comments .. I hate WENGER soo much Since I heard him defend the Price Increases.. SCUM
You mean to say the british core is the undoing of Arsenal and overrated set.
Despite 2 goals, it was boring match. I hope Wenger realizes starts Francis next Sunday, otherwise Arsenal will be shredded by Leicester City.
WE BACK TO WINNING WAY!
3points, so I let go of my comments.
Special mentions: Ozil, Cech and Flamini for
different reasons.
We did what was needed today “win”!
Glad to get the 3p. Not happy with the performance…
me neither, dont understand the players attitude, they werent tracking there runners, where was the intensity, alot of errors.
wish i didnt watch Leicester yesterday, huge gulf in hunger
dont celebrate just yet, next sunday will give us way more answers
@muffdiver
I’m not worried about LCFC, I’m worried about all the other matches…
Awesome double save from cech few minutes from the end! Class saves! Coyg!
Ox got his first away goal in 5 yrs and his first goal since September 2014…
Ramsey had a better game than his last 3-4 games..
I wanted us to score more goals in the second half but we didn’t play so well in the 2nd half…
Some players today looked tired. They were not closing the opponents down giving them space.
Good save from Cech at the end. World Class!
Anyway, delighted we got the three points.
Arsenal All The Way!
Classic, poor Wenger performance. Score 2 and defend for rest of the 70 minutes. Didn’t backfire only because of Cech and poor shot accuracy by Bournemouth. We still can’t score to save our lives and it will backfire on us. But at least we have Welbeck coming back wohoo!
Flamini played the whole 90 minutes and he was invisible for 80 minutes of it. Gibbs? Get the fudge out. Walcott sub on the 92nd minute, AW is utterly clueless.
MOTM Petr Cech. Everyone else disappeared for the second half. Well Bellerin was quite good throughout and could say he was the best player from us going forward.
Glad to see see Ozil following the ball when the ball goes over the top to Giroud. Happened last week as well but Ozil couldn’t put in at point blank.
We seem to want to walk it in. More crosses should come in and more goals will be scored.
Thats why Ozil shouldn’t be rested,never!He will pull this team forward and create chances.
Our attackers need some shooting practice _ ON TARGET shooting practice!
Great shift from Hector bellerin today! He stood tall at the back when danger alerted!
Where was mohamed elneny today? Not even on the bench!
He’s in hospital.
Dire performance.
Cech MOTM.
If this arsenal team can be champion then the god must be sleeping.
Good shift from Gabriel today! Coyg!
Bit average really.
Like another season is in danger of becoming.
Gotta be happy for 3 points I guess…
I dont want to sound negative, but i cant see us winning the leuage the way we are playing now.
the problem we currently have is that our transition between defending to attacki is poor. weak link up play, and to many players starting in the line up who lack football creavity. i miss the days we played one, twos and our skilled teams.
Santis game play is being missed a lot.
Ramsey is a underperformer who is playing to much.
Giroud is a bench player and is playing to much.
Sanchez is not in form bec he played through the summer and bec of his injuries.
Chamberlain is currently not good enough, and Campbell is also not the answer.
Flamini is just there to make up the numbers.
One or two flaws are okay, but to many and you have this arsenal we see.
Next week will prove everything.
Haha nice one on Flamini…he need games as hes hoping for france national team call up!
players of this quality and earning this money have a responsibility to there fans to make a conscious effort every single game.
not the bare minimum for a win.
completely unconvinced by them, these players can do alot better, we have seen that many times.
Don’t Bournemouth players have the same responsibility?
Well the manager is responsible for their mentality so blame him, reason Sanchez, Ozil and Cech are different is because they weren’t groomed by him from a young age and understand the value of hard work. Coquelin and Campbell also understand because they played abroad where they weren’t guaranteed 1st team spots.
We won that game in the first 30mins. Play like that against Leicester and we loose. Poor. No killer instinct.
the only killer instinct was when Oz took his shot and scored.Either you need to be accurate either you need to hit it hard.Even Forster could not save that.I know that Oz learned his lesson from Ston game.Sadly no one else!!
God I miss Poldi’s finishing!
i heard the rumour that arsenal are considering frank rijkaard move as a replacement for wenger
Not a great performance, but the result was the main thing given the points dropped of late.
What I found so frustrating today was some of our counter-attacking. We quickly get into the final third with Bournemouth stretched, and we then just slow the play down, gradually passing all the way back to our defence whilst allowing the opposition to get plenty of men back behind the ball, thus making it much harder to score. It’s not just this game, it happens all the time! Leicester break and just go straight at a defence, causing all sorts of problems, whilst it’s almost as if we don’t want to score at times. We should learn from Leicester! I’m no tactical expert, but I imagine it’s easier to score against a team with only 2 or 3 defenders in the box, opposed to the usual 6 or 7 once we slow everything down.
Excellent point Third Man
That’s why we need a CF with PACE and KILLER INSTINCT. Walcott has pace but NO INSTINCT. Giroud has instinct but NO PACE OR SKILL.
Hahaha
Theres a simple solution for that…
Get Giroud to sit on Walcott’s shoulder’s ??
That would freak alot of defenders out ??
Which would lead to more goal opportunities for us ??
I honestly thought we controlled the game, until that Cech double blinding save I could not see them overturning scoreline. We were nowhere near our best but that’s to be expected after the latest run of results, so I was glad to see two players who don’t usually score hit the back of net with some nice finishes. Would have liked to score a couple more and I think if it wasn’t for our recent bad results we would have pushed on and gotten a couple more. Alexis and Coquelin getting some needed match fitness is also good to see, and then there was the surprise of Wenger sticking with Gabriel, looks like we aren’t the only ones Mert pissed off. Definitely some positives and next up is Leicester, onwards and upwards.
taking da 3 points but did not like da subs..even a non futballer could see that we needed TW 4 OG,JC 4 Alexis(seemd tired or bored) &COQ 4 MF20..what’s wrong wd wenger.?he killed our game n were lucky not to concede..
cnt undrstd u
I agree. When Wenger tries out a sub tactic which is another DM and left back in 1 certain game and we ended up not conceding. He chooses the same subs every single game after that which dosent ness wrk. And if one likeup works in a certain game. He chose the same lineup in every other game without adapting it to the apponent as mourinho does.
What a bunch of bizarre individuals calling themselves Arsenal fans! What do they ever want? When the team plays what they call well and fails to score they curse and when the team plays poorly according to them but wins the game they still curse! How can you categorise such people? Are they clueless, directionless, pathetic or what? If I may ask those grumblers, what is the purpose of playing the game? I believe, like most sensible people, that it is to win. Here is Bournemouth which beat both Man U and Chelsea this season and some delusional characters think our team is not good enough because we didn’t win by a big margin! Please, give us a break by saving us your empty rumblings.
ffs wake up man.
its not that we didnt score more. its the effort.
of course its great to win, but we didnt battle , how many games this year did we commit fully for 90 mins, tracking runners, not giving them an inch?
why with inferior players to us are lc top of the league…think about it.
we have the personnel to win this league, but we dont have the hunger- thats my issue
Would you care to look at the league table?
only if you promise to join me on this bouncy castle
I want to see that players give everything on the pitch full 90 mins.If we can go and score 5 -6 then go and score 7-8!
Full power for the whole season (incl training-train hard!!!) – Thats why they get paid,right.
If needed humiliate opponent then do that – I’m ok with that.
Show that we are serious title contenders, than we will get fear into our opponents and will make our next games more easier….something like Leister did against manc yesterday.
yes 3 points today but this was not one of these games.
Why did we buy El Neny if we’re going to play a 34 year old has been?
Why sit Coq to play Ramsay?
What happened to sanchez? he looks disinterested now.. wlc to arsenal!
Why does wenger insist on playing the same old, boring, unconvincing football?
Once you take an interest in the team (and player availability) beyond slagging it and develop a tiny bit of understanding (about recovering from injuries) you might be able to answer your own questions.
3points, so I let go of my comments.
Special mentions: Ozil, Cech and Flamini for different reasons.
Why TW never had a run after 70 I don’t no. Why was the new lad not even on the team sheet. And why do our players look like they are looking like they don’t want to play for Arsenal anymore? Or is it they don’t want to play for him
Wenger is going senile, he needs to be relieved, I don’t see us winning the league with the way we are playing and If we eventually win, we don’t deserve it, for a team that wants to win with this kind of low confidence level and cluelessness from our manager and players, even if we win the league, Wenger should just go, there’s nothing spectacular about this side that you can reflect on if we win it, it will just make Wenger more delusional
It’s more of a relief than anything else!
Just when you think that the floodgates were about to open,
Our boys sit back and invite our opponents to attack!
Did we even have a shot on goal in the second half?
We had an opportunity to press for more goals after scoring two within 2 minutes but hey!.. Where’s the desire to boost up our goal difference? … At the end of the day, it was the 3pts that mattered, anything less would have killed all our hopes!
There’s something fishy about Flamini getting alot of game time ? wtf is that about? ?
I’m not buying that, easing Coquelin in bull?!!
We need that Pivot sorted out before Barcelona come to town, otherwise we will get punished big time!
@FBG
We need that pivot sorted out before next match…
in prev season when 2:0 up, we went for more goals and got scored on. thats why we dont do it now.
OTOH if our players could be arsed to run back to play defence after an attack, we could do both attack and defend. but until that day, its just better to defend when u have 2:0 up.
I wonder if Moyes still believes “the jury is still out on Ozil” lol
Usually Im very happy with a win even 1-0
But today the correct word is “relief” because I did not want to go with 5-0 without a win
Positives
1. A win
2. Ox scored again
3. Gone above Man City
4. Can go within 2 points of Leicester in next game
Negatives
1. Spuds are ahead of us 🙁
2. Still 5 points behind Leicester until next game
3. No scoring in the 2nd half
4. Flamini (in my opinion)
Hahahaha
*Freud steps in with a tranquilizer , huge chains and cuffs*
“WINNING WAY” huh!
Well, that ws just one win and one way….. We’d need more wins and more ways if we are to go so far
There is more indication Arsenal will not win the title than indications hinting they will.
We have too many 40 minutes players.
Ask yourself this question. If you look at the current Arsenal squad, how many of these players can make it into better teams? Only 4-7 at most, and that is being kind.
The other ones, know this is their career high, and they also know Wenger will keep backing them no matter what. So what do these players do. They play good once every now and then and they ease out the full season. That along with their giant wages. Compare Arsenal wages to Bayern for example and you will see which players are receiving to much pay. Next time contract talks are on the table, the management should tell these players, they have to take a pay cut to stay at the club, because their wages isn’t justifiable. Walcott for example is not justifying his wages at the moment. He is one of the bigger if not the biggest earners, but on the pitch he hides most during games.
We need a ruthless no-nonsense manager
We are labouring to wins these days. You can count on one hand how many games we’ve won by three goals. Even goals are hard to come by because our work rate and end product is poor as a whole. Leicester haver harder working players, and more importantly fitter players. Arsenal players fitness go down every season with the exception of a few. Look at them today. At the start of the second half they look like they’ve come out tired, even after having a 15 minute break.
amazing watching leicester yesterday how their players shut down the shooter; how they run up for attacks and haul their ass back for defence too.
wenger seems unable to motivate his players.
Zero points from Chelsea is all u need to know about this season
costa just did us a favour…the irony in that is not lost on me haha
walcott,giroud: pls note: when 1:1 on with keeper, costa did a side-step and didnt shoot straight at the keeper.
I laughed at Wenger’s comments that Leicester did not buy any big players so why question him.
News flash – last 3 summers your marquee signings were Ozil, Sanchez & Cech. What world do you live in? You have been signing superstars for 3 years!!!!!!!!!!!
and its not a coincidence that those that he spent a lot on are our pivotal players. i’m not saying he should pay 70M for de bruyne or sturridge. just that you wont win PL or CL with all sub-10M either.
why do admin delete certain comments. ahhhhh dick-tatorship
Dissapointed with the defensive game. When coquelin and Gibbs came on it meant we had 2 left backs and 2 DM’s, & at that point we let them have quite a few meaningful attacks and if it was a more clinical team we wudv drawn the game. Coq just got back so I understand he needs his sharpness tho.
coq not as sharp as i wouldve hoped. sanchez also. but sanchez had good last game so he’ll be back when we face leicester.
What a boring side we ‘ve come out to be nowadays! And I truly don’t blame the players but the manager. Sanchez must be getting really bored with Wenger’s clueless attacking strategies! MOTM for me was Özil, then Koscienly then Cech. The only way Wenger knows how to win is to score an early goal and then to throw all the defensive players in, in order to keep the result! Oh and playing our highest-earning player for just 1 minute is really something, Wenger, congrats…
good win from the boys, Leicester we ar coming no that we are not man city we will hammer you next weekend