without our influential captain?
Fabregas has shown time-after-time that he's infectious on the pitch.
We've seen him hustle for the Gunners to ensure the fruition of their
resilience. And that was clearly missing today, Nasri did his best but
like we've come to see it wasn't good enough. Above all I must commend
the Gunners for not giving up, for keeping the belief and most
importantly for fast-forwarding Hull City's Premier League exit.
We were made to work hard, harder than we did at Stoke and at the end
it was our commitment versus their determination and I must admit we
were indeed lucky to scale through the hurdle imposed by Hull at the
Kingston Communications Stadium.
But you might ask, what is more important the win or our performance?
I'd say our performance - we lacked the incisiveness Arsenal are
renowned for, we looked like an understrength and fatigued team
(Hull, who played for 45 minutes with 10 players showed more
desperation to earn a point than we did). And almost made a joke out
of our title ambition.
I might be dissapointed with our performance but I am satisfied with
the result (1-2). At least our rivals especially Manchester United
know the extent to which their job is done.
Here's a little match report, my eyelids are heavy. So far so good, we
are still hanging on and to say the least we aren't doing badly
either. As expected, the match started on a high note, and it wasn't
devoid of controversy as a repeat of what happened (just two players
were involved this time) in December last year at the Emirates ensued,
resulting in the booking of Bendtner and Boateng respectively. Hull
and Arsenal were fined by the FA, for failing to restrain their
players last year, and today was no exception as Boateng who
eventually got what he deserved (red-carded) for aiming a malicious
tackle at Sagna, five minutes after inviting Bendtner's trouble by
dragging the youngster backwards intentionally.
We started on the wrong foot, gave away possession easily, but built
slowly yet steadily, on our confidence which led to a typical Arsenal
move and Bendtner picked out Arshavin, cleverly and the Russian made
it look easy as he scrambled his way past his markers to emphatically
state Arsenal's intent with just 14 minutes gone.
Our lead lasted for less than a quarter of an hour as Vennegoor of
Hesselink who was clearly off-side decieved referee Marriner by diving
in front of Campbell - taking no chances Marriner awarded a spot-kick
and booked Campbell for a non-existent foul. Bullard who's the Tiger's
record signing stepped-up to fire the home team level courtesy of the
resulting penalty.
The second-half started with Arsenal apparently nursing the injustice
meted out to them by their hosts. Our bitterness resulted in
frustration and Arshavin and Bendtner grew from bad to worse (their
efforts on goal hardly troubled Myhill).
Just as Hull were about to derive comfort by denying Arsenal a
hard-fought win Denilson fancied a shot outside the penalty area and
funny enough, it was too hot for Myhill to handle and Bendtner, was
handy to tap in from close range automatically sending the Gunners
above Manchester United pending the outcome of their result tomorrow.
