Arsenal 1-1 Aston Villa – 19/08/06 – (Barclays Premiership) 19 August, 2006

So we didn’t get off to a winning start at the new stadium, it could have been worse though, thanks to Gilberto’s late equaliser we shared the points. With Liverpool drawing against Sheffield Utd it’s not really that bad to draw against Villa, Also Bolton beat Spurs 2-0 which was nice…It’s Chelsea v Man City and Man Utd v Fulham tomorrow, hopefully they can drop points too. We didn’t play too badly yesterday, we just couldn’t get a decent shot on goal, and we kept passing it around the box which was really frustrating. The main highlight of the day was Theo Walcott coming off the bench on the 73rd minute. His immediately impressed and showed some great skill, he really does look like he’s going to be an amazing player for us. 11 minutes after coming on he crossed it in for Gilberto who grabbed the equaliser.

After a pressing first 45 minutes we thought we’d scored with the last kick of the first half, there was an eruption of cheers but then it was disallowed. It would have been a much different game if we’d scored that and gone in at half time 1-0 up, but we didn’t and 8 minutes into the second half Olof Mellberg headed a corner into an open goal as Lehmann had come out trying to punch the ball away and he missed. From that moment on until then end of the game it was non-stop pressure from the gunners, but with no decisive end product. It was really frustrating to watch and was edge of the seat stuff. We needed to bring someone new on and I was hoping Arsene would give Van Persie a run out, on the 66th minute he did come on for Adebayor. He changed the game a little bit but there was still no cutting edge. We needed something extra. We needed Theo Walcott.

He was like a breath of fresh air for us and immediately did some skills to get around to Villa defenders and he looked dangerous whenever he got the ball. Chants of “Theeeeo, Theeeeo” rang around Ashburton Grove. After all the attacking we finally came up with something on the 83d minute then Theo himself set up Gilberto Silva to make it 1-1. There was a massive cheer from all around the stadium, everyone was so relieved. After the goal we thought we could push for the winner and the non-stop attacking football continued in the search for that second goal. In the end it came with no result but it was a good effort.

We should have won the game really, we hit the woodwork 2 or 3 times and I think if we equalised a bit earlier we might have got a winner. At then end of the day it wasn’t to be and I can take the draw, at least we didn’t lose, it could have been worse. It was still a great day out, I’m now looking forward to Wednesday for the home leg of the Zagreb tie. See ya later people.