I must admit – I was one of the few who doubted our Arsenal squad and their ability to beat Man City. But I was wrong and I couldn’t be more delighted. The 16 corners we successfully defended. Man City’s meek 4 shots on target, 7 shots in total. A clean sheet against a team we once allowed to score 6 goals against us was a wonderful reversal. We defended and worked hard for the entire 90 minutes. The word “proud” is not enough to describe how I feel.
Now that it appears that we got our defensive woes in shape, I want to turn our attention to the offensive side. We also had 7 shots total, but only 3 on target. I am satisfied with this especially since 2 of those found the back of the net. But I think that we should have had more opportunities to score or at least place more shots on target through our counter attacks.
ARSENE WENGER – ““You could always see that when we won the ball, if the first two passes were right, we would be dangerous. Especially in the second half, Aaron had two chances and even in the first half we had plenty of opportunities.
“Let’s take the positives from that result, the urgency and the confidence levels. It’s always difficult to get that mixture right between being focused, confident and relaxed without losing the needed desire.
“The only regret we had was that we didn’t take advantage of many dangerous situations to finish the game off earlier, but overall I think we did very well.”
Countless times the Man City defenders made mistakes and countless times we had break aways from the many Man City corners. The chances to counter attack were there, but then a misplaced pass or an extra dribble turned those occasions into waste. With the way our Gunners competed at the Etihad, I believe that they deserved more opportunities to turn Hart’s net into a target practice. We now know we can score from set pieces, but capitalizing on these counter attacks can change our score lines drastically. Anyone else agree?
KC
To be fair to them alot of the counter attacks were snuffed out by Fernando and Fernandinho. There were two chance that I felt we could have done more with. The Ramsey chance, when we broke out with him, Giroud and Sanchez, was the biggest chance that we should have made more of and in that instance Kompany should have got a red card. And the Flamini cross to Giroud that was intercepted by Kompany, who at that point should have been waiting in the locker room, but really they were quite good at slowing the breaks down. We did well, we used the counter attacks to provide breathing room for the defence, and made the most of possession.
And the Bellerin botched cross, would have left OG with just Hart in place.
arsenal have agreed a fee with villareal of 15.6 million for brazilian defender gabriel paulista-
we have our centre back
Hope u are not just diving…..? Where’s yo source mate?????
Can’t remember that one. But still we can’t be too mad at Belerin for that as he had his pockets weighed down… Thats where he had put Milner and Clichy…
Don’t forget one thing also. The defense looks soooooo much confident with Ospina between the sticks. I don’t know, I truly believe they were pretty nervous last games with Szceszny there.
I have to say man city were lucky to conceed only 2 goals, it could have been 4 or more if it wasnt for some miss chances by the ox, rambo , and bellerin! But overall good team performance and i was elated for the 3 priceless points away from home! Coyg!
Kompany was a very lucky man indeed to finish the game! Should have been shown a second yellow and sent to the showers!
Yes In few of my earlier comments I highlighted these facts. In most of our games we are getting chances to score 4 to 5 goals. If we are able to be a bit consistent in goals then it will put a definite fear in the opposition to play against us. For our team also would become more and more confident. Just like Liverpool were banging goals last season,
We need to score more and more goals considering the kind of attack we are having.
With this attack talking most the opportunity it gets, we can always outscore opposition even if we don’t have strong defense.
David ospina has proven that he is ready to be our “main stay” NO 1 first choice goal keeper! Enough said! Coyg!
I think we didn’t counter with enough pace and intensity. City to city though as they broke up our attacks well sometimes.
I totally love Sanchez as most of us here, but one thing I feel he needs to work on is his 1st touch and over dribbling even when its not necessary when he has a pass on or can just run forward with the ball.
I understand this is his game though it sometimes slows down the attack or allows defenders to put in a leg. He can learn a thing or two on this from Carzola and TR7 (they usually know when to dribble and when to be direct).
Opps, “Credit” to city and not city to city. I made a doodoo!!!
Us fans are never satisfied. We beat man city at the Ethad in a well deserved win, not by luck against the run of play. Some of us then say we should have scored more goals. I cannot remember when we last won away against a top PL side. We did beat Chelsea away a few years ago, but that was the year they finished outside the top 4.
Let’s just enjoy the win and hope it is the start of a good run, winning at home and the occasional draw away to top teams with no lost games would be great. Hopefully that would take us to third place, I can dream.
We are yet to see; alexis—-welbeck—-walcott.
With that trio upfront, I think our counterattacks will be more potent because they offer so much pace.
hopefully we will get this paulista before the wknd if any of the reports are true, but we will hold the bets until it happens he sounds like a good player as long as he is as good as vermaelen(at his best) or slightly better then that’s what we need.
And means that we can rotate kos and manage his game time the end of season then we can get him fixed up properly, then probably move chambers inside to number 4 c/h/(back up r/b) and bring in academy player as a back up 5 c/h so we will be well stacked at the back when debuchy gets back.
Any one else see that wenger was in Switzerland recently i wonder if there are any personal visits(he has been know to do this and be very persuasive to SANCHEZ) made to certain defenders, and while his was there to try convince this certain player to join us now or summer for free instead of going to italy.
FABIAN SCHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR.
Our counter attack is weekend by the fact Giroud and Santi are not exactly fast. Alot of the time we get slow movement due to this. Alexis on the other hand is a great ball carrier and can penetrate and get defenders tripping. Why were our counter attacks poor? Well we just didn’t pass or make the right choices. Did we still play well despite that? Yeahuh. So no complaints really. It’ll come. Counter attacking is something we’ve not been allowed to do since the original days of Henry so it’ll be a while before we completely reintegrate it into our game. That said, with Ox and Walcott and Welbeck and Campbell all as options for counter too, I don’t see us far off making it a tactic for many more games!