Another great win for us, and it's against a team at a stadium where previously we've struggled - even the Invincibles scraped past Pompey at Fratton Park in similar conditions. And that was with a fairly complete team; on Wednesday we were without Theo Walcott, Cesc Fabregas, Robin van Persie, Gael Clichy, Kieran Gibbs... but still we comprehensively beat Portsmouth by four goals to one, thanks to goals from Eduardo, although it took a big deflection, Samir Nasri, Aaron Ramsey and Alexandre Song, who's quickly becoming a terrace favourite here at Arsenal.
We started off pretty decently, but it was the home team who created the first real opportunity, when Song slipped on the wet pitch, giving the ball to Kevin-Prince Boateng, who had the chance to spring clear of our defence. But he took it too wide, and although he got a decent shot away, Almunia turned it around the post with relative ease.
Arshavin had an effort from range zoom over the bar, and Eduardo glanced a header wide, before the latter pulled the ball back for Abou Diaby, who hit a powerful first time shot with his instep, only to see Asmir Begovic tip the ball round the post for a corner. It was a good reflex save to be fair. But then Aaron Ramsey was fouled 25 yards, a bit to the right of the centre, and Eduardo took the free kick. It was a terrible strike that luckily deflected off of Younes Kaboul in the wall, and Herman Hreidarrsonn on the post decided to leave it, thinking it was going past the post. It didn't, and we were 1-0 up.
About ten minutes later, Song played a great high ball into Eduardo inside the area, who was given time to make some tea and sit down and think about who to pass to by the Portsmouth defenders. He rolled it across to Ramsey, who flicked it neatly into Nasri's path, and after delaying for a second, Nasri drilled it into the bottom left corner, 2-0.
In the second half Portsmouth again failed to threaten, but it took us until 70 minutes to fashion a proper opportunity, which Ramsey did all by himself. He nicked the ball from a Portsmouth midfielder, completely skinned another before slamming a beautiful left foot shot into the corner, an excellent goal for the youngster, who's coming on well this season.
Portsmouth pulled it back to 3-1, when Bellhead played a one-two with Anthony van den Borre to score via a deflection off of Thomas Vermaelen. Our fourth and final goal came after Song had attempted, and nearly succeeded in doing, an outraegeous bit of skill on the edge of Portsmouth's area, the ball was half cleared to Nasri, who bided his time before picking Song out unmarked, and he scored a beautiful header into the top corner - it was even better because the ball was actually behind him!
A good win for the Arsenal, without a lot of key players - although Tomas Rosicky did come on for about 15 minutes. Walcott and Cesc are out for 9-11 days, and van Persie obviously still out for most of the season. Not sure about Bendtner though, but let's hope he's back soon.