Chelsea Vs Arsenal | Premiership 29/10/2011

[Leody]

First goal, unplayable. Cech had no chance.

Theo's goal. The guy sprung up after stumbling and slalomed through both of their cbs, simply because he reacted quicker than them. His shot was hit so hard that it didn't really give cech a chance to react, look at the finish again. If Rooney/Hernandez/sturridge etc had scored that against us, a lot more would have been made of it. Goal of the week for me.

Santos goal. For me, cech should have done a better job with that, it wasnt hit that ferociously. Poor keeping for me.

Rvp second. I'm sorry, but how many times have you seen players deeply f**k up a one on one? Rvps, composure in the 85 min to round cech at 3-3 was imense. Ok it was gifted by a horrible mistake, but rvp still had a lot to do between receiving the ball and putting it in the back of the net.

The fiiiiiif goal - so because it was a counter attacking goal it is any less invaluable? Come on! Rvps finish was hit with so much venom that it literally did a 90 degree turn before it got to cech. Regardless of a keepers reactions, sometimes some shots are unsaveable. What makes cech such a good keeper is that he anticipates attackers decisions and moves to nullify what try going to do before they do it. Rvp and Walcott defo caught him out for their power strikes inmho.

Never said it was any less valuable because it was a counter attack goal. I lumped the 5th in with the 1st where we broke them down. They left themselves exposed, we took advantage, good goal. Same with the other 3 that were down to poor defending. They were slack, we made them pay. Can't discount that.

My point was though, against a tight defense, on the day, we don't score 5. That is why people are saying Chelsea defended poorly, and not that we were awesome. It isn't some media hate conspiracy against Arsenal this week. Some weeks it is, this isn't one of them. We did what most PL attacks would have on the day. Nothing above and beyond. They gave us big openings, we made them pay for the mistakes. We truly beat their defense without them making an error twice. The 1st and the 5th goals. We broke them down a couple of other times to no avail.

But to think this weekend was a masterclass in attacking football is folly. That's why the commentators and the pundits are not talking like it was. Not because they have some hidden hatred for Arsenal. Because they see the game for what it was. Poor defending on both ends.

[Forest]

Maybe so but again the luck went the other way, last season it would of been us and got ridiculed in the media, this time its Chelsea and happy a certain news paper has ripped them to bits, made me chuckle the writer saying Cole maybe past it.

[Inchpräctice]

Besides, someone at twitter has already suggested that Koscielny is by far the biggest Nazi in Arsenal uniforms:

Great picture that.

Edited for clarity:

van_persie_denies_stupid_nazi_salute_questions.jpg

Never said it was any less valuable because it was a counter attack goal. I lumped the 5th in with the 1st where we broke them down. They left themselves exposed, we took advantage, good goal. Same with the other 3 that were down to poor defending. They were slack, we made them pay. Can't discount that.

My point was though, against a tight defense, on the day, we don't score 5. That is why people are saying Chelsea defended poorly, and not that we were awesome. It isn't some media hate conspiracy against Arsenal this week. Some weeks it is, this isn't one of them. We did what most PL attacks would have on the day. Nothing above and beyond. They gave us big openings, we made them pay for the mistakes. We truly beat their defense without them making an error twice. The 1st and the 5th goals. We broke them down a couple of other times to no avail.

But to think this weekend was a masterclass in attacking football is folly. That's why the commentators and the pundits are not talking like it was. Not because they have some hidden hatred for Arsenal. Because they see the game for what it was. Poor defending on both ends.

No-one is saying it was a masterclass but we're saying that it was great attacking play and that shouldn't be discredited by supposed goalkeeping errors.
Both teams attacked very dangerously but our attacking play was more dangerous which is why we won the game.
Both teams didn't defend well but we defended better which is why we won the game.

It's no good saying 'We only won because their defending was shit' because so was ours. Let me put it another way, imagine both teams had defended well and both teams had attacked exactly as they did.
The game would've finished 2-0 to us instead of 5-3, still a win - away from home against one of the top sides in Europe. Except no-one would be making excuses for us.

Also when you say 'they left themselves exposed' it implies that their defence just wandered off down the tunnel for a drink.
WE exposed them by dragging them all over the place. RVP's runs along with Ramsey's, Theo's and Gervinho's pulled their defence in all different directions.
Djourou (yes Djourou) combined with Theo to humiliate and expose the supposed 'Best Left Back in The World'.
As I said before this is a defensive unit that has not lost a game at home in the PL since FEBRUARY.
They don't suddenly become shit overnight. We made them look shit with great passing.
Their entire back four are seasoned internationals whereas we had Mertesacker and Santos who've been at the club six weeks and Djourou out of position plus Koscielny who's a total novice at this level.

When you say 'We did what most PL attacks would've done on the day' you make it sound like Stoke would've beaten them.
You still have to finish the chances you create and we have clinical finishers in our team that on the day did not miss.
I also seriously doubt whether any other team could've created the number of chances that we did. Gervinho and Theo tortured them in ways that most other teams aren't capable of.
Defensively the likes of Song and Kos kept some serious attacking players at bay preventing a cricket score, especially in the second half. Again I'm not convinced that other teams would've managed that.

There are soooooo many positives to take from this game it just seems so morbid to go down the road of 'it only happened because of x, y and z'.
We thumped our rivals in our their own back yard, let's enjoy the moment.

[CynicalGooner]

To be honest it's true that we were shocking defensively and on another day we would have lost. But really, I don't care one bit right now, because games like that are why I love football and it's games like that you'll talk about for years to come.

[Forest]

To be honest it's true that we were shocking defensively and on another day we would have lost. But really, I don't care one bit right now, because games like that are why I love football and it's games like that you'll talk about for years to come.

Exactly, it was a classic and we came away with the 3 points and bragging rights.

[Leody]

Semantics really Inch.

Don't misunderstand, I was certainly over the moon when I heard the score. Still am. I'm just not as confident that the team really has taken that next step and improved as much as you. That's all.

We certainly made them pay for their mistakes, which we don't always do, so credit for that. We did break down their tight defense at least 3 times in the first half which is very encouraging. Theo had more quality final balls than he had in his career before that match. Ramsey looks to be nearly all the way back.

Lots of positives.

But it's clear to all why everybody is pointing out Chelsea's defending. They were shocking at times. The Santos goal and Terry falling on his face were not due to us at all, that was all them being stupid. No attack can pull all 11 men to one side of the pitch without a defender or two going on a massive walk about. Credit for picking Santos out though, and getting the ball to him in all that space. But a solid defense doesn't give you that space.

Like I've said, we won, that's all that matters in the end. Nobody in Manchester was upset when Diaby scored a brilliant header for them. I'm not complaining that Terry can't stay on his feet.

I just fear that kind of performance leads to another cricket score against United. We give a team like City that many chances they finish 7 or 8. And those sort of teams won't be as easy to get behind.

[Leody]

Let me add, it's nice to be worried about those matches though, and not if we can manage to get by Villa or Stoke...

[starmandb]

Agree to disagree then mate.

Both teams yesterday defended horribly. If thinking that makes you believe I'm negative, or "not and Arsenal fan" then fine. I don't care.

Then end, we won, that's all that matters. But I'm not thinking we're going on to win the league after watching that. Or that yesterday's performance was even close to an average performance from an early '00's Arsenal squad.

Edit: And I never said we wouldn't have won. Let's be clear. I even said we created other chances that we didn't finish that could have given us 2-3 goals at least, but we didn't take them.

Shit, we should have had 2 in the first 5-10 mins. The Gervinho chance and the RVP chance were purely down to us beating their defense. We fluffed though.

yes,,we were much better in 2001 when we lost 3-0 at home to middlesbrough who were fighting relegation
2 lovely own goals from edu and silvinho
i would take a rose tinted performance over a win at stamford bridge any day?

[Git]

Leody might enjoy this stat, heh.

46% - Petr Cech has posted the worst saves to shots percentage in the 2011-12 Premier League. Exposed.

[Leody]

Leody might enjoy this stat, heh.

46% - Petr Cech has posted the worst saves to shots percentage in the 2011-12 Premier League. Exposed.

Yeah I saw that on Opta's Twitter today.

I'm telling you, Cech would have been very disappointed with himself after allowing the Walcott and Santos goals.