Arsenal 1-1 Everton – 28/10/06 – (Barclays Premiership) 29 October, 2006

Everton frustrated us with some negative football and didn’t allow us to play. They tried to upset us and right from the start they worked tactics to stop our beautiful football; they chose to attack the south end first. We started pretty much as expected but we ended the game with Flamini in centre defence and Walcott at right back and Jeremie Aliadiere, Tomas Rosicky, Thierry Henry and Robin Van Persie all on the field as we tried to get that late goal.

We went 1-0 early after 10 minutes from a sloppy corner. We didn’t deserve to be losing but we couldn’t seem to find the goal to cancel out their opener. They won a corner which was delivered into the 6 yard box, Cahill won the header but it didn’t go anywhere and was just lurking in front of the goal and Kolo Toure was unable to stop the Australian from scoring.

There’s no doubt we dominated the game and had the majority of chances. Everton had just Andy Johnson up front and packed their half of the field with players to cut out our slick passing. We managed to get a few chances in but nothing really defining. The most dangerous man in the first half was Tom Rosicky who looked the most likely to score for Arsenal. He had a few chances in the first half, one just before the break where RVP whipped a ball in towards the far post which Tom got a head to but it was blocked by Phil Neville in the area with what looked like his arm. On the replay it looked as if he’d stopped it illegally but the referee didn’t see anything wrong and we went in at the break 1-0 down.

There was some bad news from the first half when Justin Hoyte picked up and injury at right back and Matty Flamini came on after his recent recovery from injury. I don’t know how serious Justin’s problem is but hopefully it’s not too bad. That’s all our right backs injured now so we need him back, I’m not sure when Eboue’s back but I think we really missed him today. So The Flamster filled in at right back but didn’t really look comfortable there and there was a bit of switching being done throughout the game.

We nearly scored straight after the restart when Rosicky crossed it into the far post and Henry was denied by Howard with his downward header. When we came out for the second half we were goal-hungry and spend about 20 minutes in their half attacking their 10 man defence. Around the hour mark there was a non-stop series of Arsenal attacks with Rosicky again, Fabregas and Henry coming close to equalizing; we were desperate for a goal and the crowd were doing all they could to lift the team.

Wenger felt a change was needed and changed the team around to a much more attacking look. Wenger spotted that Everton weren’t attacking much down the left and felt an out-and-out right back wasn’t needed and played Walcott as sort of a very attacking deep right winger, he was officially the right back but spent mot of the time attacking Everton’s goal. Theo came on for Djourou who didn’t play particularly well, not the Johann we’ve been used to seeing. The back four/three was now Walcott (kind of), Toure, Gallas and Flamini.

After an onslaught of attacks we finally won a free kick in a promising position after Rosicky was fouled a few yards outside the box. We desperately needed to score this and when I saw that Van Persie was lining this one up I said, “Oh, not Van Persie. He’s gonna miss this…” Next thing I know I’m jumping around screaming after RVP curled in a great free-kick into the corner beating Tim Howard. It was a really well struck free-kick and I know he an do ‘em, he’s done it before but so many times at vital times he’s wasted important free-kicks. So we were finally level at one each but we were by no means finished.

Wenger threw on Aliadiere for Hleb for the final few minutes. There was plenty of time for us to find a winner but Everton played some extra-negative football with some time wasting to hang on for a point. We didn’t play as well as we did against Reading but I still feel we deserved all three points yesterday. Oh well, that’s football for ya. That leaves us now in 5th but with a game in hand; if we had three points from that then we’d be 3rd and 4 points behind Man Utd and Chelsea. Next in the Premiership is West Ham away, they’re in bad form at the moment and are stuck in the relegation zone. They’re currently winning 1-0 against Blackburn at Upton Park, which they need but I think we’ll be too much for them next week. After that though we’ve got a tough few games: first it’s Liverpool at home, then Newcastle at home and then Bolton away which is a tricky tie for us and we haven’t done well there in the past couple of seasons. Hopefully we hit a bit of form before those games. But our next game is Wednesday in the Champions League against CSKA Moscow, hopefully we can do better than we did out there and get some revenge for an unlucky loss in freezing Russia. See you later people.