I had some sympathy for Arsene Wenger and the Arsenal players due to the circumstances of tonight’s away game against AFC Bournemouth, with the fixture schedule going against the Gunners and being made worse by our long injury list, Ozil’s continued illness and Elneny going to play for Egypt.
THat left the Arsenal bench ooking pretty threadbare and Wenger had to turn to it early when Coquelin went off with what looked like a hamstring problem. Despite all that I felt that we only had ourselves to blame after finding ourselves down and out and 2-0 down at the break.
Bellerin was the main culprit on the first goal as he left Daniels in acres of space and then made an awful attempted tackle but there was also no pressure on the player crossing to him and that was typical as the home team were brighter and better in every way from the very start.
A clumsy looking tackle from Xhaka was penalised with a penalty and second goal and I had no complaints about that until an almost identical and even more blatant push by Fraser on Bellerin in the build up to their 58th minute third went unpunished.
It just seemed as though everything was going against Arsenal as well as us playing badly but then cae a very spirited fightback. Giroud teed up Alexis to head home in the 70th minuted before a stunning Lucas Perez goal got us right back in it.
A red card for Francis added to the hope and Arsenal gave it everything and continued to threaten and in the second of six injury time minutes the scorpion kick hero and late goal specialist Giroud heaed us level, almost unbelievably.
What a game, what a comeback.
Bob.