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Olivier

We’ve had a quite brilliant weekend. With Utd, Sp*rs and Liverpool all dropping points, it made our win all that much sweeter than usual. The only blemish was a last minute Yaya Toure winner vs Swansea. That aside we’ve had a great weekend.

Our performance was brilliant vs Villa. Not because we played scintillating football throughout but because it was a complete performance with energy rationed where it should have been. It felt like we were cruising along in 5th or 6th gear only to drop down a couple and turn up the revs when required. Villa created a couple of half chances but largely we kept them at bay and it turned out to be a comfortable 3 points. For the first goal, huge credit needs to be given to Theo Walcott. He was played in by Flamini no less and the great thing about his play here was that he was shoulder to shoulder with Alan Hutton and wasn’t shrugged off. This almost dented the ego of Hutton so severely that he felt the need to bring Walcott down as a show of his dominance. Emasculated is the word that comes to mind here, followed swiftly by stupidity. He sure enough brought down Walcott and even though the ref took a while to get to the right decision he did get there. It did look for a while that the decision wasn’t going to be given however he blew up after a few seconds. I watched the game live and wondered why he took so long but the replays showed he made the right call. Sky Sports didn’t make too much of it but the MOTD pundits as well as the Villa players seemed to be incredulous to the fact that he took some time to make the decision. It happened a couple of times over the weekend and people seem to be losing their minds over these decisions. They were the right calls so just let it go. The referees of the league have been largely poor this year so when they get things right they should be left to themselves, they’ll sure enough make a fair amount of incorrect decisions to which we can all debate to our hearts content.

Olivier Giroud promptly tucked away the spot kick and became the 3rd fastest Gooner to get to 50 goals, behind Thierry Henry and Ian Wright. Quicker in fact than my personal hero Dennis Bergkamp. It’s an incredible record for a player that is so widely lambasted both in and out of our fan base. He divides opinion across the football world in that he is good but ‘not quite good enough’ to win is a big trophy. I truly think that the fans who abuse him aren’t helping in any way. The man clearly has an ego that needs to be massaged and by massaging it we get the best out of him. But that’s a discussion that’s for another day. Today it’s purely about how good he has actually been for us. He’s scored all types of goals for us, in all types of games. He’s faced adversity in certain games but always responded in the perfect way. He’s a great option for us and has enabled us to mix it with the more robust teams. Goals against City, Man Utd, Liverpool, Bayern Munich, Dortmund & Sp*rs show that he can be the man for the big occasion. The variety of the goals are also massively surprising. They aren’t all headers or tap ins. He’s scored son spectacular goals that include overhead’s, volleys and long rangers into the top corner. His biggest asset to us however has been his link play. The way that he brings others into the game is brilliant. He knows when to hold and when to release the ball, his timing is brilliant. He has adapted his game to the Wengerball philosophy and really knows what it means to be the spearhead of The Arsenal. He may not get too many assists but he will have a hell of a lot of key passes under his name as many times he will have taken 2/3 players out of the game with a slide rule pass or a flick. He may not be an all action hero in the way Suarez was for Liverpool but he’s still a damn good player. One that I now fully trust as opposed to a couple of years ago. Yes he may miss a few chances but every striker has been (even Vardy was feeling the pressure last week). That’s the key point here. Giroud doesn’t seem to feel the pressure as much in his play (sometimes to his detriment) but it’s because of that fact that he is always a threat for us. Be it off the bench or from minute one he can be trusted. If you compare him to someone like Theo it becomes clearer. Theo needs to start a game to be effective and is less impactful from the bench. Giroud however can adapt from either position and it’s a testament to his character and ability. He’s been great for us so let’s hope it continues. Olivier, here’s to you sir.

Our second goal was all about Aaron Ramsey. Winning the ball back deep in our half and 4 passes later he’s on the end of a Mesut Ozil pass to slam home into an empty net. A brilliant team goal and a great counter attacking move. It capped off a great first half for us and enabled us to keep Villa at arms length for the remainder. Great game management.

Now we can sit back and enjoy being top of the league and watch Leicester v Chelsea with our feet well and truly up. We’ll either be top of the league or be able to laugh a little more at Chelsea. Win win.

Enjoy your week folks.

Follow me on Twitter @MiteshLakhani1

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The END OF DAYS to Footballing Perfection

There aren’t many weekends that come along like the one that just passed us by, but by God when they come they don’t half feel bloody brilliant! We were ridiculed (rightly so) and labeled as ‘same old Arsenal’ (a little too hastily) after our mid-week hiding in Dortmund. The media do love to jump on any kind of bandwagon when given the opportunity and we should be used to this as football fans in general as it’s such a regular occurrence. I thought we played pretty awfully, however were able to create 3 or 4 pretty good chances out ourselves, and as we know, this is a game based around taking those chances. If we go 1-0 up through Danny Welbeck then our night could easily have become ‘one of their best ever European performances’ and so on and so forth. My point is we should definitely err on the side of caution before we allow ourselves to get carried away with the hyperbolic media that surrounds us. Unless the opinion or article you’re reading is from a source you truly trust and are interested in, don’t pay too much attention to it. I think that the poor performance in Dortmund was a combination of 2 factors. Firstly we really are not quite used to the 4-1-4-1 system and secondly we just had a very off night, which can happen to any club. Dortmund incidentally lost away to Mainz this weekend just gone whereas we went and put Villa to the sword (more on that later). Each performance needs to be taken from as much of an equipoised view as possible and then judged with a bit of distance as this is likely to give us a clearer picture of where we are as a team. Looking at the shape of the team it seems that Le Boss is trying something different and that’s no bad thing, as we need to evolve our playing style with time. We may or may not agree with the approach but if things like this aren’t tried then we are never going to know what we are missing with different systems. I think it’s an experiment in progress, maybe not one we might see quite so much after the weekends showing, but one that will be parked in the TBC section. Luckily for us Galatasary and Anderlecht played out a draw so we are still right in the mix to qualify for the knockout stages. So, we come to the weekend, where there were a whole lot of people expecting (wanting? #conspiracy) us to fail. We’re in an away game to an unbeaten Villa side who have gathered 10 points with only the 6 shots on target (how!!?!?). It was always going to be a tough game for us and in turn we were going to have to cope with their set piece threat, pace on the counter and the undoubted pressing game that they saw Dortumnd very successfully deploy against us. To be fair they had their fair share of chances and could have conceivably gone 1-0 up but for a fantastic save from the Scz. These finer points in a game are sometimes not as appreciated as they should be, similar to Welbeck failing to convert his chance in Dortmund, if Ciaran Clark scores the header, we have a very different prospect ahead of us. As it turns out they couldn’t take their chances and what followed was truly astonishing. 3 minutes and 12 seconds of some of the most incisive football we’ve played this season. Welbeck and Ozil combined beautifully (as did the team in general) in the lead up to the opening goal. I absolutely loved Ozil’s celebration as well, you could tell that the pressure was on his shoulders, especially as he was being played primarily through the middle, but he didn’t let that affect him and duly obliged with the coolest of finishes. He then turned provided from the left hand side (shock/horror!) and ensured Welbeck opened his account with another great finish. The third, albeit an own goal, left Villa in tatters and they had no idea how to react. The second half went by event free and it will make such a big difference as to how we can recharge the batteries this week. Putting in monumental amounts of effort in coming back from being a goal down etc makes for a week of relief rather than serenity and concentration for the North London Derby. That the second half passed by with minimal incident (An awful Ramsey cross field ball aside) made pleasant watching for us Gooners who are normally nervous until the match report is written. The interesting thing formation wise from us this weekend was to see Ramsey slotting into more of a deeper lying role alongside Arteta allowing Ozil to play further forward and in the middle. This was with Cazorla and The Ox either side, which looked like the most balanced team we’ve put out for a while. It was a shape that we had played with great efficiency and success last season so it made sense that the players seemed more familiar with it and even the new boy Danny Welbeck benefited from the shape of the team and reaped the rewards of the system with a goal and an assist. This looks to me the shape that we should use more often than not as it not only enables us to play good football it seems to have us in a more organised shape to deal with counter attacking football. Again this one will probably need to be filed under TBC as we find our feet as a team this season. It will be a case of rotation, rotation, rotation for tomorrow night against the Saints in a game that I hope one of our uncovered gems shines and then on to the big one. The North London Derby. A win on Saturday and our season will well and truly be up and running. In other truly brilliant events, Man Utd went from ‘having the fear factor back’ to a quite humbling 5-3 defeat away to Leicester. From being 3-1 up. Our point out there is now looking like a pretty good one but I still couldn’t help being joyful as the events unfolded. Added to that Sp*rs lost at home to West Brom and Frank Lampard of all people denied Chelsea victory in the Middle Eastlands. All of that following a 3-0 Arsenal win was just brilliant. Footballing Perfection as I mentioned earlier… Have a great week folks. Follow me on Twitter @MiteshLakhani1

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