Arsenal 3-0 Newcastle – 29/01/08 – (Premier League) 30 January, 2008
Posted by lasagnechef in Premiership.8 comments
I don’t know why they even bothered showing up. In fact, Newcastle were worse in the second game than they were in the first! What does that say about Keegan then? We all joked that 3-0 would do nicely again, and we got our wish: top of the league again, happy days.
We played the team I thought except Wenger went for Diaby instead of Walcott on the wing. It might be a little amateur of me to say the two games were really similar, by they were. I’m considering just copying and pasting the previous match report. Just like on Saturday, our left-winger picked up an early injury. Diaby was taken out and was on the floor for some time, he was carried off on a stretcher but he came back on a few minutes later. Memories of when his leg was broken at Sunderland a few seasons ago came into mind but he was ok this time.
Both sides were getting a bit of possession and having a few attacks, but Arsenal were getting by far the more of the ball and threatening Given’s goal. I don’t know what Newcastle’s game plan was this time round but it was certainly not causing us any problems.
Unlike Saturday, we opened the scoring inside the first half. Flamini crossed from the right in the 40th minute and Adebayor added another header to his collection to make it 1-0. Manu headed it downwards making it nearly impossible to save and you had to feel that Newcastle were really going to struggle now.
The visitors hadn’t given up though, at the re-start they did have a few attacking opportunities but nothing came of them. It still reminded me that the 1-0 lead wasn’t enough to be safe, even though the Geordies might not deserve a goal they could still nick one and draw level.
We weren’t playing amazing ourselves by the way. Not that we were playing badly, but we still weren’t at our best. Still, we were too good for them anyway. Some of the boys were having brilliant games though: Adebayor is in great form at the moment, he was using his strength and pace to make a nuisance of himself and he looked like scoring a second. Clichy was once again amazing, this boy deserves some headlines and if I didn’t have that boring old template for match reports I use then I would’ve given him it today. Something along he lines of: Gael Clichy, Clichy, he’s better than Ashley, he’s gonna shag Sheryl Tweedy, Gael Clichy, Clichy!
However, he star of the show was Mathieu Flamini. He was completely controlling the midfield and chased down any ball anywhere near him. I don’t know about his nickname ‘Gattuso’…I think it’s the AC Milan midfielder who should be calling himself ‘the new Flamini’. This guy needs a new contract but there’s good news today on Arsenal.com with Mathieu saying his priority is to sign a new deal with Arsenal. Lets hope all the little details are sorted out soon.
Flamini marked his great performance with an even better goal. It came 17 minutes from time when Matty picked up the ball on the left, he cut inside and let out an absolute screamer from 30 yards. It was swerving away from the ‘keeper and went right into the opposite top corner. A brilliant strike and if you haven’t seen it, well, you better.
Fabregas wrapped things up in the 80th minute. Bendtner took long a long ball on the chest just inside the box and played a nice little touch to set up Cesc who smashed the ball into the back of the net. He needed a goal and hopefully that strike will give him a bit of confidence to find his goal scoring touch again.
So it ended up 3-0 again, an easy game really. We went top for the night but Man United are currently playing Portsmouth off the park as I type. They’re 2-0 up at half time and Chelsea are also in the lead. We’ve got Man City at the weekend so build up to that to come.
