When Theo Walcott hit the post and Sebastien Squillaci scored for Arsenal tonight, all in the first seven minutes of the game, it looked like we were in for a show, but it didn’t quite work out that way.
Instead we found ourselves rather up against it for the remaining 83 minutes, particularly in the second half. We seemed to lose our flow fairly early on, when Cesc Fabregas seemed unable to shake off an injury and had to go off. It was a blow, of course, but I would expect the rest of the players to be able to take a little more responsibility than they did.
We later lost Walcott, also to injury, and without him, Cesc and van Persie, we were never likely to find much flair in our game. The likes of Arshavin and Nasri were a bit off-form tonight, but in the end we did enough to win the game, and it’s not like Arsenal to manage to hold onto a slender lead for such a long time. This season alone has shown us lose healthy leads many times, even as recently as Sunday when Leyton Orient pegged us back late on, but you have to praise the team for being resolute in defence tonight.
As well as taking his goal well, Squillaci had one of his finest games for the club, proving a worthy replacement for the injured Laurent Koscielny. I worried in my match preview that he wouldn’t be ideal in some of our big games coming up, but hopefully tonight can be the start of an improvement from him. Both Koscielny and Squillaci seem to play better when they’re paired with Johan Djourou anyway, so let’s hope he stays fit.
As I’m writing this there is no official news on the injuries to Cesc and Theo just yet, but the players are dropping like flies at the moment, after some very good luck with injuries this season. I guess it was bound to happen eventually, but why now on the week of our cup final? Hopefully Fabregas being taken off was more of a precaution than anything, so we could see him and RvP back for Sunday, but Walcott went off on a stretcher, so I’d be surprised if he made any kind of appearance at Wembley.
Incredibly enough, none of these injuries came as a result of reckless challenges from Stoke players, that’s a nice little bonus isn’t it? Then again, we do still have to go to their place later in the season.
Anyway, while thrashing opponents is nice, it is results like this, when things constantly seem to go against you and you’re not at your best, that go towards winning the league. A hard-fought win with a clean sheet is very useful indeed, and it puts pressure on United, as we go just one point behind them. Next up for them is two away games, something they’re pretty bad at this season, and one of them is to Chelsea, so there’s plenty to be optimistic about.
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