{"id":11178,"date":"2025-04-30T00:12:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T23:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=11178"},"modified":"2025-05-02T17:56:55","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T16:56:55","slug":"early-goal-gives-us-a-mountain-to-climb-in-paris-but-remember-lyon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=11178","title":{"rendered":"Early Goal Gives Us a Mountain to Climb in Paris – but Remember Lyon!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The biggest match at Emirates Stadium for sixteen years started and ended disappointingly as a very early Ousmane Dembele goal divided the teams after a frenetic Champions League semi- final. As I am typing this without the opportunity to look back on events this will be a fairly visceral and reactive report. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before entering the stadium, PSG’s ultras barricaded themselves around Arsenal tube station for no obvious reason. There was no violence that I saw but a lot of damage was done to the away seating when they visited in October. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two line ups were much as expected with Arsenal replacing Partey in midfield by Rice dropping deeper and Merino playing in his more accustomed midfield role. The paucity of options on the bench for Arsenal was a major theme in this game but very little could have prepared us for the whirlwind start made by PSG.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One has become accustomed to lateral and cautious early periods of play in domestic league football but PSG flew out of the blocks dominating possession and scoring after four minutes. A long, vertical pass out of defence found Dembele in the centre circle. He sped forward and fed Kvaratshkelia on the left wing and when the winger returned the ball centrally Dembele drove the ball home from the edge of the area in off the post. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal stunned the noisy but tense crowd and the first twenty minutes were tough watching for Arsenal fans as PSG almost completely dominated possession. Vitinha and Neves were excellent in midfield and Kvaratshkelia and Doue on the wings held their positions out wide and were a constant  threat to our full backs. Kvaratshkellia was aggrieved not to get a penalty after a challenge by Timber and Doue was foiled at the near post by Raya. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To combat the effectiveness of the high PSG press we had to go long mainly through Raya but as the half progressed we started to fashion opportunities in the PSG box. Donnarumma made a fine save from Martinelli and Merino was robbed by Neves when about to shoot. We claimed unsuccessfully for a penalty. The half was made even less pleasant by a pedantic referee Vincic who booked Trossard and Saka for ridiculous ‘offences’ and ignored time wasting and gamesmanship from the PSG team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We needed to start the second half well and thought we had done just that when Merino headed in a Rice free kick a few minutes into the second half. After an interminable delay the goal was chalked off and although we had much more momentum in the second half, PSG were content to sit deep and try to catch us on the break.  Barcola missed an excellent opportunity in the last ten minutes and Gon\u00e7alo Ramos hit the bar when he looked to me to be well offside.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our best chance of the half came when Rice fed Trossard and Donnarumma turned his low drive around the post. So, a game that begin with a flurry of attacking play settled into a more conventional match although Arsenal played much longer than is their normal style. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I write, a strong argument is going on behind me about \u00d8degaard and his very flat contribution again. Despite an admirable work rate Martin is failing to create much of note and I think Arteta has to decide if this is a temporary problem or whether the severe ankle injury he suffered in the autumn has diminished him permanently. I thought we had some admirable performances. MLS and Timber stuck to a difficult task very well. Rice and Merino rallied the side in midfield although Partey’s  absence was keenly felt and Trossard fought very hard to  retain possession upfront although it would have been a big help to push Merino further forward. It seemed perverse to throw on Nwaneri in the 86th minute and the size of our squad is an issue we must address in the summer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The recent triumph of our ladies team who turned around a defeat at home to record an emphatic triumph in France  shows that recoveries can be staged and if Partey can be added to the mix freeing up Merino for forward duties all is not lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But PSG will sleep more soundly than us tonight knowing that a very efficient first leg has been completed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The biggest match at Emirates Stadium for sixteen years started and ended disappointingly as a very early Ousmane Dembele goal divided the teams after a frenetic Champions League semi- final. As I am typing this without the opportunity to look back on events this will be a fairly visceral and reactive report.  Before entering the stadium, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11178"}],"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=11178"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11193,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11178\/revisions\/11193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}