{"id":6577,"date":"2022-09-01T09:44:20","date_gmt":"2022-09-01T08:44:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=6577"},"modified":"2022-09-03T19:53:15","modified_gmt":"2022-09-03T18:53:15","slug":"development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=6577","title":{"rendered":"Development"},"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\/1419694371\" 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:73.23232% 0 0 0;width:100%;\"><iframe src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/1419694371?et=AzfpJneITGR4M9v2hjsfTw&amp;tld=com&amp;sig=9275JQkNjbMz79qaOFS_0QbxGDxtrrDX7urW-LAFbv0=&amp;caption=true&amp;ver=1\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"594\" height=\"435\" style=\"display:inline-block;position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;margin:0;\"><\/iframe><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>An early arrival and I find a good atmosphere in the ground but perhaps a little more subdued than Saturday.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We started fluently but we had a scare on 3 mins as Villa break and Buendia shanked well over the bar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After a couple of fairly niggly \u201clet \u2018em know you\u2019re there, get in their faces, they don\u2019t like it up \u2018em Mr Mainwaring\u201d fouls from Villa, in the 5th minute Lokonga jumped with McGinn and managed to catch him in the face, in the hope of performing some much needed M*A*S*H* style field cosmetic surgery, presumably.&nbsp;&nbsp;He\u2019s all heart that boy. Laughably the referee gave a drop ball to Arsenal.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the 7<sup>th<\/sup>&nbsp;minute Saka was seemingly hauled over in the box by Tyrone Mings \u2013 not so much a name as a statement of fact. There is an obvious mismatch in size as well as talent, but I guess I\u2019d be unhappy if a pen was given at our end for that.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From another final 3<sup>rd<\/sup>&nbsp;foul, this time by Kamara on Lokonga, \u00d8degaard took a smart freekick to Jes\u00fas running into the box, who took the ball on and hammered it towards the near post only for Martinez to make a good save and push it out to the corner. By now we were playing very well, with Sambi in particular in the midfield very alert and alive. From the resulting corner, after some pinball in the box, a chipped delivery back into the box from Saliba, of all people, found one of our collection of Gabriels, Magalhaes this time, in space and he takes it down on his chest and shoots narrowly wide of the goal.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the 14<sup>th<\/sup>&nbsp;minute, Ramsey went over the ball on Martinelli and the referee correctly gave a yellow. Arsenal were flying by now and from a Villa throw in their half, we won the ball back, with \u00d8degaard playing a clipped pass in behind Mings for Jes\u00fas to run onto, in the process shoulder barging the much bigger man out of the way. His cross\/shot was pushed out by Martinez for \u00d8degaard to follow up and eventually Villa scrambled a corner. It is noticeable just how much of our play up to this point came down the right via the White\/\u00d8degaard\/Saka axis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From there, we seemed to find our left-hand side and suddenly Tierney\/Xhaka\/Martinelli really began to come into the game. On the dot of a quarter of the way through the game, \u00d8degaard switched the ball left in centre-mid to Xhaka, swiftly moving it on to Martinelli who pinged in a cross from the edge of the box to find Saka steaming in, unmarked at the back post, but unfortunately unable to deal with a difficult ball with the keeper taken out of the game by the velocity of the delivery.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally, in the 30<sup>th<\/sup>&nbsp;minute, after some patient build-up play from the back, the inevitable happened. \u00d8degaard collected the ball on the right touchline, on halfway, and passed infield to Lokonga, who smartly passed cross-field to Tierney. With the mass of players having been attracted to the right-hand side, Tierney was in acres on halfway and quickly passed to the equally unpressured Martinelli, entering the final third. He drove forward, attracting two Villa players towards him and slotted a pass through for our new advanced central midfielder, Granit Xhaka, on the left-hand edge of the box to ping in a cross, which, deflected, Martinez was unable to hold and parried out to the 6 -yard line for Our Saviour to hammer home. It was what we deserved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At this juncture, a note on the former Arsenal stopper.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I have seen some comments of a querulous nature, wondering why he was given such a bad reception. For the benefit of those not in the stadium, you didn\u2019t see the fact that he was outrageously wasting time from pretty much the first minute. TV has a habit of cutting away with camera shots of men in tracksuits shouting or directing advice\/admonitions to players when the ball goes out for a goal kick. Those in the ground get to see a whole load of faffing and time wasting in these slots and it is hugely frustrating. Video is aided by judicious use of directional microphones so that the frustration on the crowd doesn\u2019t alert the tv viewers to what is going on on the pitch. I hope that clears it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Xhaka by this point was seemingly everywhere, popping up to pick up the ball direct from Ramsdale and starting moves one minute, in the advanced central midfield role, looking to move the ball forward, ever forward, the next. He is looking nothing like the stolid, immobile player of, well, not too long ago. You have to be delighted both for him and of course for us as a team, unexpected as that emotion is with regard to the gentleman in question. I am finding my particular slice of humble pie surprisingly tasty.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As half time approached, \u00d8degaard was booked for pulling down Watkins, advancing but still in his own half, in rather the same fashion as Saka was by the nominatively deterministic Mings. An interesting treatment of two similar offences, by a referee who I thought had a reasonable game as a whole, even if he did allow rather more leeway to Villa in their infringements, seemingly indulging yet another sub-standard English manager to encourage an approach to the game not out of place in a bygone era of smogs, rationing and boots the same weight as a bag of sugar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the stroke of half time, we nearly had the second when, after a period of moving the ball around, Gabriel played the ball out to the left wing position for Tierney who chipped a ball into the penalty area for our new advanced central midfielder to head back to Martinelli, who in turn let rip a thunderous right foot half-volley, destined for the top right hand corner had it not been for a cat-like spring from Martinez.&nbsp;&nbsp;Great football all round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Half time \u2013 Arsenal 1 &#8211; Villa 0.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Villa clearly received a rocket at half time and started the second half rather more brightly, but to negligible effect. Slowly we began to exert our dominance though with Xhaka and \u00d8degaard, in particular, passing and moving beautifully and Jes\u00fas using his body and God-given strength to pronounced effect against much bigger men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the 56<sup>th<\/sup>&nbsp;minute we saw an example of just why Martinez, despite being an exceptionally good shot stopper, is just so easy to dislike.&nbsp;&nbsp;Having caught the ball well from an Arsenal corner he ran forward as if to start a quick attack. Jes\u00fas shadowed him, as forwards do, which resulted in the keeper putting a loose headlock on the forward then, realising this was a marginal infraction of the rules under most referees, falling to the ground as if he were the offended against, rather than offending, party. Laughably, he won the free kick after appearing to say to the referee that he had received an elbow. I mean, don\u2019t these people know there are cameras present? Oh yes, VAR. How foolish of me. The North Bank immediately rang out with a hearty rendition of \u201cAaron Ramsdale, he\u2019s better than you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On 64 minutes, Ben White made way for Tomiyasu. The referee who had spent the first 15 minutes studiously ignoring Martinez time wasting was by now keen to usher White off quickly. White correctly chose to ignore him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the three-quarter mark, McGinn was finally yellow carded for a disguised stud tackle to \u00d8degaard\u2019s ankle which resulted in \u00d8degaard being substituted 10 minutes later by Smith-Rowe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was beginning to feel like, for all our smart play and clear dominance, we were at risk of being sucker-punched as we just hadn\u2019t tested the keeper enough in the second half. From my seat in the North Bank, Saka was beginning to look tired after a much brighter performance, and quite possibly beginning to show the effects of the, ahem, close attention he had been receiving from the Villa midfield and defence. Smith-Rowe had warmed up and was about to come on. Sure enough, on 72, Villa were awarded a corner, which on TV evidence should have been a goal kick. They subbed off the hugely ineffective Buendia and borderline violent offender McGinn for Coutinho and Luiz and it was the latter direct from the corner who evened up the score. I\u2019m in two minds as to whether Ramsdale was fouled as has been claimed. The Villa player doesn\u2019t have to get out of the keeper\u2019s way and arguably simply held his ground. The simple expedients of either putting a man on the near post or indeed in between keeper and opposition player would have mitigated against the wholly against the run of play equaliser. What I would say is that if that is given then I want to see similar cases treated the same way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Smith-Rowe was immediately stood down. Arsenal responded in a way in which we all hope to become accustomed. Immediately on the front foot, we attacked down the left with Martinelli, who from the edge of the box hit a pass infield to Tomi. He drew the defender before passing outside to Saka who worked some space and chipped back whence the ball had originally come, to Martinelli to hammer home from the 6-yard line. It took a minute to equalise. Resilience is just one characteristic which Arteta is inculcating in this squad and it is great to see. Cue pandemonium in the North Bank. And absolute screaming delight from the players and subs warming up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was now game management and soon after, Holding came on to shore up the defence. I should point out that Nketiah came on for Our Saviour and showed a maturity and presence which I never knew he had. He has clearly learned a whole lot from Jes\u00fas. I look forward to watching him play more and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite the handicap of our absences \u2013 Partey and Zinchenko &#8211; we showed that we could battle and play very good football.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I suppose that the newly formed Celebration Police under Sturmbannf\u00fchrer Sourness will respond with \u201cit\u2019s only Aston Villa\u201d but frankly anything which makes people like him and \u2018the walking proof that man is descended from the apes\u2019 that is hairy-knuckled Richard Keys, unhappy can only be a good thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>21CG and I walked off into the sunset to catch our train home with the ground ringing out in acclaim of our new energy and enthusiasm. We will lose games and we won\u2019t win the league, but the future is looking so, so bright and the Emirates is on the way to becoming the noisy, bouncing, positive home we wanted on leaving Highbury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images An early arrival and I find a good atmosphere in the ground but perhaps a little more subdued than Saturday.&nbsp; We started fluently but we had a scare on 3 mins as Villa break and Buendia shanked well over the bar. After a couple of fairly niggly \u201clet \u2018em know you\u2019re [&hellip;]<\/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\/6577"}],"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=6577"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6586,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6577\/revisions\/6586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}