Sunday, July 31, 2011

Arsenal 2-2 Boca Juniors - South Americans Steal Arsenal's Thunder

Julio César Falcioni's boys recovered from two goals to share match spoils with Arsene Wenger's Arsenal, at the ongoing Emirates Cup.

Arsene Wenger said everything was under control during his post match reaction, although the interview contained a lot of factual errors - I must admit that inasmuch as we are doing the right things forward, we are equally very unstable at the back. Laurent Koscielny and Thomas Vermaelen are arguably Arsenal's best pair for now. The other boys are too error-prone to be called professionals just yet.

Honestly I expected a diverse mix of attacking flair from the visiting team, but overall Boca did not quite disappoint given the calibre of goals they scored irrespective of the manner in which they were scored. Don't forget, without mistakes there will be no goals and without goals... But seriously speaking, Wenger needs to work on Johan Djourou and Sebastien Squillaci's man marking tactics before joining the likes of Liverpool, Inter Milan and Ac Milan who have perfected their zonal marking scheme.

Arsene Wenger handed debuts to new signings Gervinho and Carl Jenkinson yesterday. And I was not surprised to see both players live up to our lofty expectations. Gervinho latched on to Jack Wilshire's neat cross to register his intentions less than eight minutes into the friendly encounter via a low cross which Van Persie gladly converted. Substitute Aaron Ramsey fired home Arsenal's second with his first touch.

The supporters expected our beloved Arsenal to wrap things up by either scoring again or defending to the last man, but that did not happen as our defenders connived to deny us victory at the Emirates. An error by Sebastien Squillaci in front of goal gifted Juan Riquelme the opportunity to locate Lucas Viatri, who gave the visitors a lifeline. Before, Pablo Mouche turned Johan Djourou in and out, to put the ball beyond the reach of Vito Mannone.

The Arsenal will hope to sort out its transfer situation next week in order to avoid distraction from its midfield orchestrators - Cesc was dropped because he decided to watch Barcelona's season review instead of train, while Nasri sauntered by, during the match as if he had all the time in the world.