{"id":12497,"date":"2025-12-28T12:13:31","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T12:13:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=12497"},"modified":"2025-12-29T15:04:55","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T15:04:55","slug":"is-it-too-early-to-be-troubling-santa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=12497","title":{"rendered":"Is It Too Early To Be Troubling Santa?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A cold Saturday in December and that rarest of rarities, a 3pm kick off. All is good with the world.  Or so it seemed until around 4.15 pm yesterday when our old friends panic and passivity (thank you, Bath) turned up like Marley\u2019s ghost, very nearly to ruin things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even before the game began there were a couple of problems. Timber was nowhere to be seen on the timesheet and then, in the warm up, Calafiori pulled up and had to go and sit with the Sick, Lame and Lazy club, to be replaced on the teamsheet by MLS.  If Mikel asked for a full complement of healthy defenders from Santa this Christmas, he didn\u2019t get it.  Perhaps he just addressed the letter poorly and sent it to Satan instead. In any case, this meant that we had Declan Rice at right back, not where we want to watch him, but needs must when the devil micturates on your cornflakes.  The bench was incredibly strong, welcoming back Big Gabby. In fact, the discussion turned at one point to whether having the name Gabby was compulsory in terms of bench sitting, as we had three of them on there. The only change to the expected subs was the addition of 16-year-old Marli Salmon as now the only actual defender on the bench. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first minute, a lofted pass from Trossard was played behind the tree-sized oaf that is Lewis Dunk and Gy\u00f6keres forced his way to the ball very well, only for his technique to fail; instead of the delicate lob with his right instep which I think he was trying to pull off, he tamely caressed the ball in the manner of a back pass to the keeper. Not an auspicious start for him.  Arsenal had begun breezily enough, with lots of possession and \u00d8degaard and Saka in particular buzzing around, keeping the ball moving, and moving forward. Saka had a couple of attempts from the right side where was he was, not at all in the spirit of Christmas, torturing the Brighton left back. Then on 13 minutes, the boisterous, well lubricated crowd was rewarded with a superbly taken strike from \u00d8degaard.  The Arsenal press forced the Brighton keeper into a poor clearance which was won by Saliba. The ball bobbled towards Rice, venturing into midfield as is his wont, who headed on to Saka.  Gy\u00f6keres made a good distracting run, allowing Saka to take time off from providing his Left-Back Torturing 101 course, and pass the ball inside to \u00d8degaard, who controlled instantly, looked up and hammered his shot into the near post side of the goal, between two defenders, giving the keeper no chance. A laser-guided effort, which we all hope will signal the return of the finishing we know and love.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The game continued in the same vein for the rest of the half, with Brighton playing as instructed by their odious manager, committing fouls, for some of which the referee even managed to award us free kicks.  We were well on top and on another day, we would have gone in for oranges another goal or two up. Profligacy, the third P in Bath\u2019s unholy trinity, was our watchword, however.   There was still time for a piece of Christmas pantomime, when with the whistle about to blow, MLS played a ball up the left-hand channel for Gy\u00f6keres to chase. This he did and touched the ball past the, for some reason, out-rushing goalkeeper, way out of his box and close to the touchline. The keeper clearly saw that he had misjudged Gy\u00f6keres\u2019 pace and cleaned him out. The referee gave a yellow but everyone in the ground was frankly expecting VAR to overturn it for the obvious red it was, for a high, late, dangerous, pre-meditated foul. I don\u2019t know how many other criteria there are supposed to be for a red card. It ticked all of the boxes for me. Perhaps the fact that Gy\u00f6keres\u2019 touch might have been taking the ball out played a part.  You will be unsurprised to hear that I thought it was, yet again, poor refereeing. A view which was echoed by many downstairs at the bar in Block 10 at half time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second half kicked off with Brighton making a couple of changes. De Cuyper, the hapless, tortured left back, had decided that he could take no more and was allowed a reprieve from The Rack, to be replaced by Wieffer, who fared little better. Gruda, whoever he was, was replaced by the very quick and troublesome Minteh. Immediately the game restarted, you could see that Brighton had been revved up by the odious German.  That said, 6 minutes into the half a deflected effort from Saka went out for a corner taken from the left-hand side of the Northbank by Rice. The viciously inswinging near-post delivery tempted the Brighton forward Rutter into attempting a header, but he succeeded only in wrong-footing his own keeper, planting the ball into the back of the net. That 12th<\/sup> man of ours, Owen Goal, had made another unscheduled appearance. Good!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We seemed to take that as our cue to draw them on, allowing them both more time on the ball and space into which to attack. We still had a couple of decent efforts, one from a typically bustling run and shaking off of a defender by Gy\u00f6keres fairly stung the hands of the keeper. However these were becoming more fitful and it came as a surprise to nobody to see Brighton pull one back on 63 minutes when a speculative effort from Ayari on the edge of the box rebounded off the post straight out into the middle of the area, rather than towards the touchline as one might have expected from the angle of the shot, and Gomez hammered home into an empty net.  This giving away preventable, even if well taken, goals is becoming as predictable as the scheduling of Home Alone and The Great Escape on tv on Christmas Day. Minteh then had an effort from the right-hand side of the box which was flashing towards the top right of Raya\u2019s goal until the keeper pulled off a save of which the great custodians of the past, Messrs Wilson and Seaman, would have been proud. Moments like this win games and potentially titles. Hincapi\u00e9 then saved Raya\u2019s blushes from a left hand side corner, under which the keeper got stuck and the header from Wieffer was deflected over as a result of the Ecuadorean\u2019s superb effort. A few minutes later, and with the level of edginess and disquiet among both home team and fans becoming more apparent, Mikel made some timely changes, bringing off MLS and Gy\u00f6keres for Big Gabby and Jes\u00f9s. Both these subs were welcomed loudly, as was Danny Welbeck who came on for Brighton a couple of minutes later. Well played, the Arsenal fans. 10 minutes later the bench was completely denuded of Gabbies when Martinelli came on for Trossard, who had had a good game. If Eze wants to play more than a bit part role, he really has to sit down and look at the effort put in by the two players currently in front of him on the left-sided forward role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brighton continued to press for an equaliser and the anxiety level continued to rise, In truth we still had a good couple of efforts, one from Martinelli provided by Saka, who had clearly not tired from his role as Left-Back Torturer General, perhaps ought to have been converted. The subs did give is a bit more control, notably from Jes\u00f9s, whom I hope Gy\u00f6keres is studying closely, as he was able to win balls against 2 defenders on more than one occasion, which Viktor notably wasn\u2019t.  Finally, the referee blew the whistle and the roof came off the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Onward to Tuesday night and the visit of in-form Villa. We owe them for the last-minute defeat we suffered a few weeks ago. I hope Mikel is getting in a pre-emptive request to Santa for some fit defenders.  Can someone please make sure it is correctly addressed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A cold Saturday in December and that rarest of rarities, a 3pm kick off. All is good with the world.  Or so it seemed until around 4.15 pm yesterday when our old friends panic and passivity (thank you, Bath) turned up like Marley\u2019s ghost, very nearly to ruin things. Even before the game began there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"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\/12497"}],"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\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12497"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12522,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12497\/revisions\/12522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}