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