Happy Sunday Gooners

Sunday always seems like a much more relaxed and enjoyable day if the result of the day before has gone our way, doesn’t work quite as well for the Sunday games as we are all back in work or school the next day but a win is still always appreciated. I watched the game from start to finish on a proper TV, no crappy streams for me yesterday and was pretty impressed by our performance bar one or two players and our inability to deal with a couple of their players.
A largely comfortable 3 -1 win away from home which saw goals for Giroud, Walcott and Cazorla ( not cazola Jamie Redknapp, you fucking idiot). We will have a look at the positives and negatives from the game and what we can hope to see going forward.

To start with the positives from our side we will begin with Giroud. Managed to get his first goal for the club finishing off a move that he started in midfield by poking in a cross from Prince Poldi, also set up Walcott for the second with a delightful through ball. In midfield Cazorla ran the show from an attacking view-point and his goal was a thing of real beauty, cracked into the far right corner from at least 25 yards out completely wrong footing the goal keeper. Arteta was brilliant as usual but I will talk about him in more depth shortly. At the back Mert was very good for me despite his hesitance in closing Diame for the West Ham goal but otherwise his play was top class all evening and Vermaelen looked much more assured with the BFG beside him. Jenks continued his recent impressive form and a foot race with Vaz Te which he comfortably won shows another part of his game which could really help with his development into becoming a top class right back. Gibbo was assured as he has been this season until an injury forced him off, hopefully not too serious.

A couple of negatives from the display for me. I’m normally a big Ramsey advocate but I wasnt impressed yesterday, I think being asked to play as one of the two deep-lying midfielders does him no favours as he doesn’t seem to have the defensive discipline required, the enthusiasm and effort yes but discipline no. His passing was slightly erratic and was too easily beaten for the West Ham goal.

Gervinho was back to his previous season form, blindly running into corners and generally looking like he didn’t know what he wanted to do with the ball, he was replaced by Walcott at the hour mark which probably tells you all you need to know. While Theo managed to get himself on the score sheet with a well taken goal it was literally the only time in the game he was involved bar managing to fluke a pass to Cazorla for the Spaniards goal. Walcott still needs to impress more to earn that contract.

While defensively impressive for the most part we still have not come close to figuring out how to deal with Andy Carroll, I thought he was top class for the Hammers yesterday, he must have won close to twenty headers at both ends of the pitch and nearly scored one reminiscent of his effort at the Emirates while in a Newcastle shirt and set Kevin Nolan up for what should have been a West Ham second when the game was still 1-0. For a striker who is only 6″3 his aerial ability is amazing, not £35 milion worth but pretty damn impressive nonetheless.

Final mention of the day goes to the man with the Lego Hair, Mikel Arteta. He was class yesterday in every sense, MOTM in my opinion. I watched the game on ESPN yesterday and the commentary mentioned the fact tha Arteta has made more passes than any other player in Europe this season, just think who that includes and marvel at the player. I can’t find the European stats for you unfortunately but here is a link to the Prem ones at least. He has completed 7 more passes per game than his nearest rival and posts a percentage completion rate of 93.8. That is fucking nuts. Iv said before on here that my in-laws are Evertonians and for years I was crying out for Wenger to go buy Arteta, shame we waited so long because he would have been in Spain’s championship winning teas if we had and its the least his talent deserves.

Right that’s my quota of words for the day. Interlull is now upon us so no games until Norwich away so lets all bask in the sexy afterglow of 3 points until then.

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