{"id":10929,"date":"2025-03-13T00:21:44","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T00:21:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=10929"},"modified":"2025-03-15T14:53:47","modified_gmt":"2025-03-15T14:53:47","slug":"not-much-ado-about-something","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=10929","title":{"rendered":"Not much ado about something"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color:#fff;display:inline-block;font-family:Roboto,sans-serif;color:#a7a7a7;font-size:11px;width:100%;max-width:594px;\"><div style=\"padding:0;margin:0;text-align:left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/2204181963\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" rel=\"noopener\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div><div style=\"overflow:hidden;position:relative;height:0;padding:69.36027% 0 0 0;width:100%;\"><iframe src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/2204181963?et=b7JnzI6LSM5OwNYljyP6CQ&amp;tld=com&amp;sig=P_1H8_PzfZh628xTuliNVUNWppL1nMZbSH7oOQI6pfI=&amp;caption=true&amp;ver=1\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"594\" height=\"412\" style=\"display:inline-block;position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;margin:0;\"><\/iframe><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Arsenal were held to a draw at a subdued Home of Football tonight. It was one of the strangest experiences I&#8217;ve ever had at Arsenal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The game doesn&#8217;t warrant detailed coverage as it was played without huge intensity. Zinchenko scored on six minutes curling a left footed shot into the corner after a touch from Sterling. After Kiwior almost gave a goal away with a naive blind pass PSV equalised when that popular Croatian, Ivan Perisic, finished smartly as they moved through a porous midfield. A fine run and cross from Sterling on 37 minutes (possibly his most positive contribution in an Arsenal shirt) enabled Declan Rice to restore our lead with a header that went under Benitez (personally I think Rafa has to retire, he&#8217;s past his sell-by date).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gunnersaurus failed to appear for the penalty shootout at half-time, presumably prevented by UEFA red tape although there was an unsubstantiated rumour that he was in talks with PSV to replace Rafa Benitez in goal when he takes the Tottenham job (you heard it here first).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After 70 minutes Jorginho lost the ball and Driouech finished superbly over Raya. The rest of the game was relatively uneventful and petered out into a 2-2 draw. But we were dealt a crushing blow in injury time when a yellow card for Sterling ruled him out of our next game in the competition, which I have learned as I am writing will be against Real Madrid. Sterling had a decent game tonight and it was good to see. He has had a really unimpressive year but it is important that his form improves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The PSV support was incredibly good. There must have been a lot of soul- searching in Eindhoven last Wednesday when they looked at the reality of trailing by six goals after their home leg but they showed a lot more enthusiasm than a lot of Arsenal fans tonight and I&#8217;m told that there is quite a lot to do in London after dark. I&#8217;ve never been one for pleasure myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I suppose it depends upon your point of view as to whether you were at Ashburton Grove tonight, perhaps protesting the excessive sums being charged for a game without any jeopardy or maybe finding it difficult to sum up much enthusiasm for one of the least consequential games Arsenal have ever played. What did I just write? Least consequential? All those years of Thursday night football when we would have killed for a six goal first leg lead away from home in the last 16 of the most glamorous club competition in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I did go, partly because I was writing this report and partly because I wanted to fill at least one of those potentially empty seats that the team had created by selfishly thrashing one of the best sides in Holland last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mikel Arteta understandably rang the changes, picking three left backs in the starting eleven although our starting left back was a midfielder and one of our experienced left backs played in midfield and scored. Another left back came on later and played left back when the original left back moved into midfield to replace the left back who had scored and gone off. Kieran Tierney, who&nbsp;always plays as a left back, played as a left winger throughout. I hope that&#8217;s clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There will be a certain bafflement that young players on the bench like Butler-Odejeye and Kabia didn&#8217;t earn minutes tonight. If not tonight then when might they have a chance to stake a claim?  Their prospects might be better if they had a propensity to play left-back, and I hear one of Berta&#8217;s first priorities is to sign a left back (that&#8217;s serious by the way).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Frankly what matters tonight is that we are in the last 8 of the Champions League playing against Real Madrid. I&#8217;ve already heard Arsenal fans saying we will get battered. Shame on you. We won&#8217;t, and it&#8217;s time to show some faith in a team that is one of the very strongest in Europe. We were nowhere near as good a team when we played that Galactico-laden Madrid side in 2006. Eboue and Flamini were the full backs, Senderos one of the centre backs . If only we had a Thierry Henry upfront.  But these are exciting times. I wish a lot of Arsenal fans were enjoying it a bit more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tonight was surreal but it&#8217;s on to play Real. See what I did there?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images Arsenal were held to a draw at a subdued Home of Football tonight. It was one of the strangest experiences I&#8217;ve ever had at Arsenal. The game doesn&#8217;t warrant detailed coverage as it was played without huge intensity. Zinchenko scored on six minutes curling a left footed shot into the corner [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10929"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10929"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10941,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10929\/revisions\/10941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}