Valencia Inflict First Loss & New Designs for Ashburton Grove 9 August, 2009

Last night we traveled to Valencia to for our trickiest and final pre-season friendly. Unfortunately we lost 2-0 with goals coming from Michel and Villa. I must admit, I didn’t watch too much of the game. I got home from work about 25 mins in and then when I did start to watch, the connection wasn’t very good and couldn’t see much on that tiny Arsenal TV Online screen – They should really sort that out, if they want to go on and on about their game coverage it should actually be a decent quality and then people might use it more.

Not only that, the Arsenal.com match reporting is awful. First off they reported the score as 4-0 to Valencia. I remember they got the score wrong a few weeks ago on our Austria tour too, it’s just the sort of thing you don’t do. Also they say that Fabianski saved a David Villa penalty midway through the first half despite also saying he came on for Almunia at half time…

I makes it even harder trying to report on a game I didn’t get the best coverage of. Arsenal.com, sort it out.

Anyway so yeah I didn’t get to see much of the game but I did pick up bits. Fabianski’s penalty save, whatever half they think it was, is good for his confidence but unfortunately we couldn’t keep the clean sheet for Lukasz. The first goal came from a free kick out on the right, it was put in low to a busy box and after a couple of touches it fell at the feet of Michel who smacked it inside the post. A lucky goal, the ball could’ve gone to anyone but you could argue that we should’ve cleared it first or thrown a body in front of the shot.

The second goal came right at the end. David Villa broke down towards are goal and despite being forced into shooting from an angle he calmly put it through Fabianski’s legs. Lukasz didn’t seem to be in much comfort though, it looked like he tweaked his hamstring minutes before and was just hanging in until the final whistle.

Oh and another dig at the official website, where’s the post-match interviews/transcripts? Nowhere yet anyway. So I can’t tell you how Fabianski is doing, if we got any other injuries or anything.

I hope no one is getting worked up by the result. Ok, we lost yeah but it’s only a friendly. We made a whole load of substitutions giving the whole squad a run out. The game was more about getting us ready than getting the result. We might even take a positive from losing, to lose any game isn’t nice for a player and the team should pull together and stop it happening again. Safe to say if this was a Champions League game it would’ve gone a lot differently.

Ok moving on and there’s been some images of Ashburton Grove artwork leaked. You know outside the stadium that big, gray concrete area behind the Arsenal badges and Emirates logos? Well we’re going to sorting that out in the new future with this new mural. If you click this link you can download the images that Arsenal sent to Islington Council for approval, including a mock up of the design actually on the side of the stadium. I guess I like it, it’s better than a big slab on concrete and it’ll take the attention away from the big Emirates logo.

I’ll wait until it’s actually up before I start thinking what it looks like. Apparently it’s all been approved so we could see it up in time for the Portsmouth, but you know what they’re like it’ll probably be around Christmas…

I’ve only got a couple of initial queries – where is Dennis Bergkamp? And what are those two guys on the end doing to Cliff Bastin and Thierry Henry?

And finally today, Theo Walcott’s been talking about how we must learn to grind out results and play a bit dirtier. He is right; we have in recent years been know sometimes as a team you can kick and bully and nick a result off. We have to dish some of that back and not take any shit.

That’s it for today then. This time next week we will have played our first game of the season. Who’s excited?