Arsene Wenger, at some point in his career at Arsenal, made
a deal with the devil. Maybe it was at the 2005 FA Cup Final, maybe the 2006
Champions League final. If it was the latter, however, it didn’t turn out well
for us at all. We are so out of favor with the Fortune Gods, it is
unbelievable. If losing the match on Sunday wasn’t bad enough, we lost Bacary
Sagna for at least three months with a broken fibula. Of course, when our
medical team say three months, they really mean he’ll be racing Wilshere for a
come back. Ok, maybe not, but you get the point.
I feel happy for Wilshere though – he’s just had a baby, and
at least will get time to spend with his little boy. All I hope is that he
returns to doing what he does best – no, not unprotected sex – before Archie
Wilshere joins the Arsenal academy.
Well, enough dilly dallying – straight to the game now. We
were being written off before it even started, with Spurs the favorites to win
for the first time in a long, long time. The other talked about point was how
we would deal with Adebayor. By we, I mean both the players, and the fans.
While the former did their best in keeping him relatively quiet on the pitch,
the latter were, quite honestly, disgusting in their attempts to bring the man
down. More on that later.
There are so many issues with the club and the team to be
addressed that a small, concise summary of the game will have to suffice for
the moment. We dominated possession early on and dictated play, although were
unbelievably sloppy in possession at times, and made a habit of giving the ball
away in dangerous areas. Our defense was stretched quite often (surprise,
surprise), but we were saved more than once by the brilliance of Wojciech
Szczesny. That guy has been massive for us throughout the disaster that is this
season. However, he could do nothing against our defense, which was intent on
conceding a goal.
They did. It was Adebayor’s flighted through ball that found
Voo doo Vaart, who used his shoulder/arm to bring the ball down and then struck
the ball sweetly across goal to finish. Of course, the handball wasn’t given.
To be frank, it was difficult for the ref to spot, although it escapes me what
the assistant was doing at this point. Maybe he was busy looking up the complicated
FIFA rulebook, wondering whether he was within his rights to call the foul, and
whether technically it was handball in the first place.
Voo doo Vaart then celebrated with the fans, something that
would technically earn him a yellow. At this point he was on one already, and a
second would have led to him being sent off. So the goal technically resulted
from a handball, and Rafael technically should have been sent off. But whoever
in the world cares about technicalities, right? Yes, I concede the rule about
the celebration is a stupid one, but it is all the same a rule, and Spurs were
very lucky not to be down to ten men.
Posts
