Arsenal 1-1 Sp*rs: Sportsmanship
Sunday, April 23, 2006
A match that was so dramatic it should be turned into a drama. Sp*rs dominated the first half against an Arsenal team missing almost half of their starting lineup. Henry, Fabregas and Eboue were left on the bench to rest their legs for Arsenal's match against Villarreal.
Sp*rs had countless chances to score but Lehmann and some bad finishes kept the score at 0-0 at half time. Adebayor and Van Persie had chances too but failed to convert them, one of the chances saw RvP through on goal, one-on-one with Robinson but the put his shot wide.
Sp*rs started better in the second half aswell, but the game changed when Arsenal made their first substitution, bringing on Eboue on for the injured Senderos, pushing Djourou to the middle of defence. Suddenly, Sp*rs were looking less likely to get away with a point, Arsenal were pushing forward in search of a goal that looked just minutes away. Wenger decided to add some speed to the attacks by bringing on Henry for RvP and Cesc for Diaby, but it backfired...Arsenal pushed to high up and found themselves in a counter-attack. Gilberto and Eboue clashed while trying to get the ball, the ball fell to a Sp*rs player, Arsenal players stopped expecting Sp*rs to put the ball out but were shocked when the player passed it to Davids who crossed it to the far post where Keane tapped it in. I will talk about the goal later but lets go on.
Arsenal started lobbing balls forward in every attack and it finally payed off in the 84th minute when Adebayor used his physical power to snatch the ball from Starteri and passed it to Henry inside the box who finished it like only he or SN14 could have. By the way, the squirrel did not make an appearance...unfortunately. Anyway, Arsenal kept pushing for the win but couldnt find it, but Davids being sent off was good compensation.
Now onto that goal, if you see the replays, you would see that after Gilberto and Eboue clash the ball does NOT fall to Davids straight away, which rules out the statement that he did not know what was happening behind him. If you look at it closely, you can see Gilberto shouting for Sp*rs to put the ball out of play when Carrick[i think] picked up the ball in front of them. And again, if you look at the replay, you can see Davids clearly looking at the incident and decided to pass the ball on instead of put it out when the ball fell to him. That rules out the statement that he didnt know Eboue was down. Im not blaming Keane, you pass the ball to me 2 yards out to an open goal in a local derby, ill shoot too but im blaming Davids and the referee. Yes, that baldy, there was a clear 10 seconds[about that] between the time Eboue and Gilberto clashed and when Keane scored. When he saw Carrick pass the ball instead of putting it out he should have blown his whistle.
All in all, im happy with the result because if we win our match in hand then we are only a point behind them and they have a far tougher run-in of matches compared to us. And I cant post without typing the fab result Liverpool got against Chelsea, a 2-1 scoreline that I will enjoy talking to my Chelsea friends about.
posted by highbury1913 @ 2:38 pm | |
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