Do The Flamster

Not many Gooners were expecting to come away from Anfield with a stylish 3-1 victory.

So you can imagine the shock everywhere when the final whistle went, leaving the cup holders out of the competition.

Vital Arsenal member Wigston75 has come up with a piece worthy of challenging Tim Stillman’s writing skills.

Tonight’s result was awesome, great backs to the wall, display, and in contrast to our oft profligacy in front of goal, we were simply über clinical this evening – Tommy gun`s 2 goals were majestic, but the pool defending for the 2nd was woeful.

Watched the match round my mate Dave’s place – he, and my other rmate pol are Liverpool fans, they were decidedly less than pleased with Riise’s attempts at defending for the 1st goal. Pool bombarded us for much of the game, Almunia stood tall and did superbly well with the crosses swung in, quite a few of which could easily have become tricky situations.

I was slightly concerned by some of our defending tonight, Kolo (unusually for him) and Eboue seemed to be quite nervy with a man coming at them. Senderos had one spell in the 2nd half where he was repelling cross after cross, pol commented how dominant he was during this period. Swiss Tony even saved his seemingly-customary glitch moment until late in the game, and that went sailing over the bar.

I am beginning to think that Gerrard has a somewhat one dimensional game. I have been a great admirer in the past, but the more i see him these days, the more he seems to do the same thing – drive forward and unleash a long range effort. When they are on target, they look excellent, but more frequently, they become filed under ‘speculative’.

I would like to give a special mention to the Flamster. He was not prominently involved in the game, but he seemed to be quietly going about his duties in the midfield alongside Gilberto, and even though ‘pool were at some times seemingly camped in our half, i felt strangely at ease and confident about what they were doing in the midfield. The two of them seemed to be doing a good job of keeping things tidy in midfield.

The performance tonight was obviously designed to play out the way it did, with the lion’s share of the game being given to ‘pool, with the arse playing the breakaway game. And we did this to great effect. Our breaks, whilst not lightning fast, were excellent in their movement at times, the passing and running doing the job of pulling Liverpool open, creating space, instead of breakneck thrusts from defence being the implement used to separate the Liverpool defence, which, at home, is one tough barrier to breach.

I was disappointed not to see more of a threat from RVP tonight, but I have to say i did enjoy once again watching his greatly improved awareness and desire/ability to bring his team mates into play, keeping the ball moving and assuring we kept possession, which, in a game of the like which we were involved in, was a very important facet tonight, to lose the ball on those breaks would have possibly resulted in us enduring too much pressure, from which we could have succumbed to at some point during the tie.

All told, an immensely satisfying result – I really did have reservations as to whether we could come out of this game with our name in the hat, having cast my mind back to our woeful showing at Anfield last season in the league. So to go there and return with three goals tucked away, and a place secured in the fourth round was sweetness indeed.

Gooners, another great result, secured against a very good side, who have a formidable record at home of late.

See you all in the fourth round!



Articles submitted by Vital Arsenal members are based on the opinion of the member and not necessarily the view’s of the network itself.