Missed chance as Prof takes wandering eye off ball
But then again the scandalmongers’ obsession with salacious tittle-tattle in this country, is more an expression of the warped sense of moral propriety of their readership than their targets.
The only roasting I’m really interested in is the one I expect our manager to be dishing out in the dressing room after the Gunners casually coughed up another costly three points at the weekend.
Despite the much deserved plaudits earned by Chris Hughton’s Toon, sadly I can’t envisage them taking points off of any of our rivals on their travels, with the sort of smash and grab tactics they deployed at our gaffe.
Sure Andy Carroll is a handful, Arsene acknowledged as much in his programme notes.
But then how is it possible that a Premier League defence isn’t sufficiently well drilled to know they need to pick him up at set-pieces?
I can’t claim to be a visionary to have predicted that it was only a matter of time until Flappy Handski’s next gaff, as unfortunately such is a goalkeeper’s lot. Some suggested he’d have done better to remain on his line but I’m delighted to see a keeper keen to dominate his area, by coming for everything inside his domain. However at the time I couldn’t fathom why he wasn’t able to beat Carroll to the ball considering he has the three-foot advantage of the use of his arms.
It wasn’t until watching the lowlights on the box later than night that I realised his indecision was to blame. He started to come for the ball, hesitated and then realising Chamakh had left Carroll with a free header, he had no choice but to challenge for it.
Fabianski is a decent enough goalie, but he lacks that abrasive cocksuredness of a keeper who does everything with total conviction. If he hadn’t hesitated, he wouldn’t have been competing with Carroll from the standing start that left him struggling to get to the ball.
Nevertheless our susceptibility to defensive faux-pas notwithstanding, Sunday’s defeat was several more times frustrating than having our bum smacked by the Baggies. At least they caught us on a bad day and posed a threat by playing some entertaining footie, whereas on Sunday Newcastle merely endured because they wanted it that it that much more than we did.
Coming on the back of our defeat against Shaktar Donestk, we once again went into Sunday’s game against lesser opposition, with a low tempo, lacklustre approach, as if we have just a little too much belief in our own ability and that this will eventually tell as the opposition begin to flag, without ever needing to match their work rate.
The fact of the matter is that the key to success against such sides is for us to play the game at the sort of pace they can’t live with for 90 minutes. When you start at such a pedestrian pace, without necessary vitality, it becomes impossible to shift through the gears, until invariably we go a goal behind and are forced on to the front foot.
There might’ve been some solace in the Scousers stuffing Chelsea, but in truth it only made me that much more enraged at wasting a rare opportunity to reel the Blues back in. Although based on our current form, we’re still some way from a viable challenge.
