"All I have to do now is show him he made the right choice. I'm sure he has and I've got to show it on the pitch."
Arsenal 3 Burnley 1
A scoreline like that normally reflects a relative easy day out more often than not but like Stoke, it wasn't. Should have been more if not for Bendtner's clear cut missed chances.
This fellow, sure is damn frustrating. To put simply, he's completely full of himself and he thinks greater of his own ability than his actual ability.
4 clear cut as hell chances and he spurned them all, on a day where our CROSSING was the most amazing it ever was this season. The number of fantastic goal-scoring chances those crosses provided was astonishing to say the least, since our crossing has been really bad this term. Nasri played extremely well and he was there pulling the strings, and provided that beautiful lob for Fabregas to get onto and score. When Cesc was taken off for precautionary measures, Nasri stepped up and did a splendid job at driving the team forward. He did it fantastically. Walcott had the ball played to his feet on more occasions and did so much better. He has been in for a lot of stick this week after the England game but he responded superbly. His final balls improved drastically, except that the fellow who was on the end of it decided that strolling onto it without busting your guts to put a good foot to it wasn't needed. Walcott probably decided that he's never ever going to get that assist so he FINALLY made a cut in into the penalty box and got a sweet shot away that hit the bottom corner. Great great great response to his critics.
Despite all the glaring misses of one Nicklas Bendtner, he really brings a different dimension to the team with his height and physicality. When he went off we weren't as much of an attacking threat as before. His crime today was simply his finishing. Gotta cut out that cockiness and get your head down and work hard. Walcott is a testament to that. I'd still start him against Porto and pray those don't happen again. If you swapped Eduardo with Bendtner I'm not sure he would have been able to get on the end of those crosses at all. Since dudu has came back from injury he has been a shadow of the player we all thought he was. He seems to lack the pace to outrun the central defenders and that's pretty important when your job as a striker is to try and get ahead. The defenders close him down with ease and our attack threat is nullified just like that. Bendtner for all his crimes, holds up the ball pretty well and allows his teammates to get forward. The bad part about that is he might have gotten into a great position to shoot and decides to pass instead.
It was a good team performance and although Burnley got the equaliser, I never felt that we were in any danger of not holding onto the lead when Walcott gave us the lead back. They weren't very good going forward and even with the knowledge that Silvestre isn't the best defender in the world. Everyone knows that you take your chances against Arsenal with set pieces but they didn't play with belief that they could have gotten something out of the game at the grove. Never thought that the team could be emotionally vulnerable from Ramsey's horrific injury which only happened a week ago.
Luck was on our side today. I know some people would disagree with Bendtner missing all that but I don't think those missed chances were down to luck - they were down to him and him alone. It's just frustrating because he gets into those great positions and simply don't finish it off. I still can see him being a great player for Arsenal but he really needs to stop being so cocky because pride always comes before a fall.
At this point, even if Arshavin didn't add the third in injury time, I would be happy with the 2-1. All we need is to keep winning, regardless of the score. No need to be greedy. No need for fancy goals. Just 3 points.
Labels: Burnley, Nicklas Bendtner
A Little Drunken Madness @ 1:08 AM
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