Foster’s clanger puts lucky Arsenal back in the Top Four

I know we all expected to have yet another difficult away game at Watford last night, and they certainly tried to rough the Arsenal players up and try to put us off our stride. You could say we got lucky when Ben Foster dithered in his own penalty area after a back pass but you have to agree that Aubameyang did extremely well to make up the ground and get his foot in the way at just the right time for it to rebound into the net. We really needed that early goal…

You could say we got lucky again soon after when Troy Deeney brushed past Lucas Torreira, who went down like a sack of the spuds. Normally that would have been ignored by the ref but this time he got a nod from the linesman, and suddenly Deeney was back on the bench nursing his cojones! It couldn’t have happened to a nicer man!

Despite our man advantage we still made hard work of holding on to our lead, and Watford fought just as hard with ten men. Emery was very pleased and relieved at the end of the game when we finally won an away game: “Yes. The three points is I think the most important thing today but also, I think we worked well being consistent in our structure, defending their long balls and set-pieces. Here they are a very strong team at doing that. After, with the ball I wanted to do better, I wanted to control better with the possession of the ball and with one player more on the pitch. We didn’t do that, but in some attacking moments for us, we took chances to score the second goal and didn’t score. We needed to defend in the last minutes, very close with everybody to their good action in the long balls, and the second action to be good in defensive moments.”

We should really have put the game to bed, but as we said earlier; Three points is three points!

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39 Comments

  1. Chelsea v Cardiff,Man Utd v West Ham, Watford v Arsenal.The common denominator is the winners were blessed with luck and they are still involved in strength sapping European competitions.If we play like we did last night in Naples we will go out, that’s for sure.Looking to next season, Doucore of Watford would be an ideal replacement for Ramsay.A rolls Royce of a player and second only to Kante of Chelsea in terms of stamina and work rate.He would add real power and pace to our midfield.

    1. add watford vs man utd to that list plus several liverpool referee fc matches with offside goals and salah dives. Every other big teams get lucky and win matches which they didn’t deserve to win and only arsenal fans whine when their team win lol. That performance was crap but atleast we fought to keep our win unlike last week when we were mauled by everton without any fightback.

    1. Troy Deeney: “Whenever I play against Arsenal, I’ll go up and think ‘let me whack the first one and see who wants it.'”
      well the ref didn’t want it LOL

    1. Gray wanted to trigger Leno’s reaction, just like what Deeney did to Torreira

      But the officials did well by ignoring his shenanigans

      1. I’ve never seen a goalie get sent off for shoving a player off his line. That’s his right. If a player decides to obstruct the goalie, is the goalie supposed to just stand there and let the goals go in? Leno was correct to do what he did and I expect him to continue doing so whenever required.

  2. The frustrating thing about Arsenal this season is that we’re missing so many easy opportunities in front of goal. Under Wenger we often struggled to create clear cut chances because our build up play was so slow, thus allowing our opponents to get men behind the ball, and get defensively organised. Emery has been brilliant tactically, because he spotted this as an issue, and has got us playing much more directly. Get the ball from back to front quickly, and you’ll catch the other team out.

    We saw this most recently against Napoli where we could have easily have got 6, and the same story against Watford. Missing so many sitters could cost us against Napoli, it nearly did last night, it did against Utd away, Chelsea away, and Spurs away, and so many other games. We can’t really upgrade on Auba, and Laca who have both been big culprits, but if we upgrade on Iwobi, and Miki, that could be the key to our future success. These are not half chances we’re talking about either, clear cut chances we keep messing up.

    Obviously our defence needs improving as well, but we need to be far more efficient in the final third, given how often we’re opening teams up.

  3. We won. We won. Thursday next. I don’t care how we win at this moment, all I want is win win win.

  4. Talk about understatement when the Admin says, twice, “we could have got lucky”! No “could have” about it , we DID get HUGELY lucky and is the whole reason we picked up three massively important but LUCKY points. Just before our goal we were on course for a hammering , be in no doubt of that, until speedy Auba, slow Foster and dullard and bully Deeney changed our fate. The simple and obvious fact all through the whole game is that Watford were FAR hungrier and FAR more hard working than we were. THAT IS CLEARY TRUE AND IS HUGELY WORRYING. To me the only players who earnd their corn last night were IWOBI who was our best player, LENO, TORREIRA AND RAMSAY. Auba, despite his goal, did not work remotely near as hard as Laca does all the time and this laziness lets him down big time. When he fails to score and when playing without LACA with him, he is little more than a passenger; though NOT when they both play together.

    The players I mention apart, yesterday had the away mentality of a Wenger team and that is unacceptable! We will not be so lucky again at Wolves, Leicester or Burnley(nor NAPOLI) and personallY I STILL think we are slightly odds against to make top four , UNLESS that away timidness stops! NOW!!!! Above all , I remain entirely a REALIST!

    1. I did not see Auba goal as a lucky one. He went for the goal and he got it for us. It changed everything and we got the 3 vital points. We need that kind of attitude by our players.

      1. Agree with that Godswill. There was no luck about Auba’s goal, he saw Foster dithering and was quick to take advantage and there was no luck about Deeney being sent. Got exactly what he deserves

        1. So you do not see Deeney being a dickhead against us and getting rightly sent off as being our luck then Kenny. I DISAGREE! The luck was that a fool like him was playing at all. Only a non realist would deny our luck last night.

          1. Luck or unluck is hitting the inside of the post and running across the goal line. Elbowing someone in the face is just bad behaviour. He got what he deserved, I don’t call that luck.

            1. One other point Jon, if we were lucky that Deeney was sent off as you said, the realist in you, that you’ve been telling us you are since time begun, means that Deeney was unlucky, correct. Unlucky for deliberately elbowing someone in the face. Is that what you are saying? You’ve confused me Jon.

              1. Kenny , I want to clear up any confusions when I say we were lucky. LUCK IS FAR WIDER THAN MERELY HITTING THE WOODWORK OR A NARROW DEFLECTION FOR A CORNER, RATHER THAN AN OWN GOAL ETC. Luck is also, in my book anyway, having braindaft opponents like Deeney playing against us, when stupidly he PUBLICLY said what he did, thus putting all refs on look out for strong arm behaviour, as happened. It is also having a keeper who was slow enough on his wrong foot to be caught by lightening quick Auba. But it was STILL a keeper howler and therefore lucky. I also thought the ref was generally on our side with fouls and other decisions in general and overall we rode our luck. Even a lucky bounce of the ball twice in our favour when they twice attacked us late on. We were mostly rubbish all night long , bar a few of our players only. Lucky to win therefore!

                1. I agree, we never played well and as I previously said, If Deeney never got sent off, Watford would have beat us but we’ve obviously got different interpretations of luck so we’ll leave it at that.

  5. Bring on Napoli. My initial prediction was a 0-1 loss away in Italy but that was before I saw just how bad Napoli were in finishing. We will at the very least draw them, regardless of our atrocious away form. People say we don’t take our chances, but Napoli are 5 times worse than us when it comes to squandering golden chances.

    Whatever the case, there will never be a game where you coast through from the beginning to the end. You will have to take the heat at some point and the defence will let out a few chances here and there. Am not worried about Napoli though, their attack is laughably incompetent.

  6. Whenever Arsene Wenger catches a team one man down early in the game fans can rest easy. I don’t understand like the players, pundits and some fans how does a manager switches formation 3 times in a game that the opponent is a man down. Absolute craziness.
    Making half time changes against ten man says it all.

    1. Thursday in mind when 1 goal up 1 man up too. Play it safe. But I wasn’t comfortable with just that 1 goal margin.

        1. Wenger’s last season is your safe haven. Why is it we judge our greatest manager of all time on his last season. Is it because you can’t compare to his better days which is what I crave for

  7. What injury forced Mavropanos into that team last evening. When last did we play a back four.
    We are now heading for a year of experimenting under Unai Emery.

  8. That is why I think if we don’t qualify for the semi, Emery should not be allowed to take us beyond his contract. Every outcome in football favours on Thursday if we want it more. Win, draw or lose so there is no excuse for him not to make sure his team are up for it. imo believe he is responsible for all our appauling performances away from home with his tinkering and confused tactics. Even his players are confused based on what PEA said yesterday. We are lion at home and cat outside it.

  9. I have not had my say here in a while, but I have been following closely. My say on yesterdays came.

    Gunners let us stay calm and rejoice the win. We have been so bad on the road we had to start from somewhere. Unai also had Thursday’s game in mind hence couldn’t start the game with some players.

    For years we were crying for a Manager who was a tactical guru and yet today others are calling Unai out for for changing the system and players during the game. Even he conceded after the first two changes we still couldn’t take control of the game. Sure glad he quickly noticed our shortcomings and reacted to them accordingly. Garcia is a very tactical Manager too and had his team up for the fight, it was a game of chess against the Spanish Managers and we all know how it ended.

    Let us remain optimistic and boost the team for Thursday. I was shocked to see all the negative comments directed at our players on social media even after collecting those very important points.

  10. looking at our rivals’ fixtures, we can only afford to drop points one more time. And if we drop points we ideally want a draw of course. Chelsea have one hard game left against United. United have City and Chelsea, Spurs have Man City. Win all our home games, beat Burnley, get 4 points from Leicester and Wolves, and that should be good enough to make top 4.

  11. OT so that guy who hit Jack Grealish has been released after just 4 weeks… and bragged that those 4 weeks were the best of his life & that he’s “not apologising for nothing” what an idiot… something else that amazes me is how on earth Joey Barton is still employed

    1. I hate Barton! He is just a brainless thug, who clearly hasn’t matured even as a manager.

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