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Middlesboro vs Arsenal 9th December 2007 – Premier League – Riverside Stadium It now seems like a bad decision to stay up for the Ricky Hatton and Floyd Mayweather boxing match last night. I went to bed at 6am and now I’m knackered. At least all I have to do today is to watch this match on Setanta. Boro are struggling in the league this season and have not won a match since September. If it wasn’t for the loyalty of Chairman Steve Gibson, their Manager Gareth Southgate would be unemployed; although I’m sure his patience is running out. So here we are again, in the North-east playing against a struggling team with a manager under pressure. Hopefully this will be a better game, and result for Arsenal than we had on Wednesday. Howard Webb is the referee today and apparently Arsenal have only won 4 out of 16 games that he has officiated. Great! We name an unchanged to side to the team that played on Wednesday: Manuel Almunia Emmanuel Eboue (Theo Walcott 60) Kolo Toure Gael Clichy William Gallas Bacary Sagna Lassana Diarra (Denilson 60) Gilberto Tomas Rosicky Eduardo (Nicklas Bendtner 45) Emmanuel Adebayor The first chance of the game goes to Middlesboro but it’s a poor effort and easily caught by Almunia. In the 3rd minute there’s a disaster. Howard Webb point to the spot after Toure is adjudged to have brought down ex-arsenal player (not ex-Arsenal goal scorer!) Aliadiere. Downing, a Spuds fan, takes the penalty and it goes under Almunia’s body for 1 nil to the home side. What a terrible start – it’s never boring watching Arsenal. Boro are playing very much like Newcastle did in midweek. Very physical and hard working and Arsenal are playing similar to their midweek performance to by giving away stupid fouls, mistakes and giving the ball away. After 7 minutes Eboue puts his hand in a Middlesboro players face but luckily this was not seen by the ref. It was very stupid of him and he may get punished by video later on. It’s a scrappy game with lots of free kicks being given away to cheaply. As a result it’s stop start and not very entertaining. After 13 minutes there have been 8 fouls given (4 from each side) and this shows how the game has gone so far. 20 minutes played and it’s very frustrating for Arsenal. There’s no fluency in their play and when there is we just give the ball away. There’s some comedy defending from Arsenal as well and it’s only poor finishing from Boro that prevents them increasing their lead. How many times have I said that this season? We will run out of luck at some point if we don’t sort it out, and it could be today Our first shot is in the 22nd minute but it’s a poor effort from range by Rosicky and it goes wide of the goal. Our tactics today are to play long balls to Adebayor which is not our style. We can’t play that way and it’s not working. On 33 minutes we are awarded a free kick from a central position outside of the Middlesboro area but Kolo’s kick hits the wall. Our second shot is an Adebayor header but again it goes wide of the goal. Middlesboro have a good chance to score from a free kick themselves but the luckily for us Downing’s shot is saved by Almunia. There’s a worrying few minutes before half time where Boro exploit the gaps in our defence but thankfully their strikers are worse than our defenders. Half time couldn’t come quick enough. Half Time Bendtner comes on for Eduardo in the second half but it doesn’t make a lot of difference to our performance. Just before the hour mark Boro should have doubled their lead after a good Aliadiere cross is blasted wide by Boatang. This signals changes and Theo and Denilson come on for Eboue and Diarra. On 66 minutes we have some better possession but we don’t look like scoring. On 72 minutes Aliadiere is through on goal but Toure manages to block the shot for a corner. The Corner kick is taken and there’s a shot on goal by Boro. Almunia makes the save but deflects the ball out to a Boro player who takes it well and blasts it into the roof of the net. It’s a 2 goal lead for Middlesboro and a disaster for Arsenal. If you play shit you get what you deserve. On 76 minutes Theo make a good run into the Boro area but a tackle is made on him. He jumps out of the way but if he went down it would have been a penalty but he didn’t and we get a corner which we waste. Kolo has a shot wide a couple of mins later but to be honest we don’t deserve to get anything out of the game. Middlesboro were the better team from start to end. They had the hunger and desire to win and were first to every ball. We get a consolation goal with pretty much the last kick off the game but it doesn’t merit a mention. In three days we have surrendered 5 points out of 6 and this is not championship winning form and at the moment we don’t look like a team good enough to win the championship. |
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