{"id":8314,"date":"2023-09-04T06:09:05","date_gmt":"2023-09-04T05:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=8314"},"modified":"2023-09-07T05:15:14","modified_gmt":"2023-09-07T04:15:14","slug":"three-points","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=8314","title":{"rendered":"Three points"},"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\/1657541591\" 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:76.93603% 0 0 0;width:100%;\"><iframe src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/1657541591?et=18tJjIRQS2dIhgmbjqUZiw&amp;tld=com&amp;sig=eI8mlQutYz-3utZX1Anj68_evsSVDSIWCOnVs_B0XEQ=&amp;caption=true&amp;ver=1\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"594\" height=\"457\" style=\"display:inline-block;position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;margin:0;\"><\/iframe><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>First game of the season for me and like a 6-year-old eagerly anticipating Christmas, I couldn\u2019t wait until the one-more-sleep was over and I could finally open my presents. Hence I was up, to use The Guv\u2019nor\u2019s term, at sparrow\u2019s fart, anxious and excited. 21CG, with all the wisdom of youth, looked at me sideways as if to say: \u201cTake it easy; you don\u2019t want to be getting overtired now\u2026\u201d.&nbsp; Of course, now I\u2019m all grown up, \u201cpresents\u201d means meeting old friends in familiar places, chewing the fat and then watching the club we love amaze, engage and enrage in varying and unpredictable measure.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pre-match talk in the pub garden, as across a whole swathe of the right-thinking portion of North London, was around the nature of the team for today and the extent of change from last season \u2013 Would Big Gabby return to fulfil the role he so manfully occupied last season?&nbsp; Would The Boss persist with the 3-at-the-back experiment which has yielded 7 points from three not entirely convincing performances? Discussions continued on the walk to the ground. The weather, in a British summer which started and ended in June, was benign. We approached the ground wearing the familiarity of both surroundings and the time-worn pre-match build up like a favourite old T-shirt, taking for granted its comfort and the perfection of its fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The ground was humming, and the North Bank Lower faithful were giving it full beans at Block 10.&nbsp; The pre-match rendition of \u201cNorth London Forever\u201d stirred the crowd to its core.&nbsp; As an N1 boy, I too gave it full beans.&nbsp; So much and so many to remember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now rather than give you the experience I saw from the North Bank Lower, I think it is only fair to offer a match report taken from the full match TV replay I have watched. To view from behind the goal is not necessarily conducive to being on top of all the important points of the game.&nbsp; The first thing I noticed from Sky\u2019s match coverage was that they chose to have the Lack of Brains Trust panel of Gary Neville and Mike Dean on the panel. So, one bloke who is famed for having an utter inability to separate the personal from the professional. And Gary Neville. They did this with apparently no sense of irony. Am I going mad?&nbsp; No. It\u2019s pure gaslighting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We lined up with Zinchenko at left back and a back four with Gabriel thankfully returned to his regular role and Ben White moving over to right back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The opening period saw Arsenal play some good possession stuff without really threatening.&nbsp; United were clearly happy to try to draw us on to them from goal kicks, which was odd given that their playing out from them was pretty mediocre. In the 25<sup>th<\/sup> minute, one such fairly fruitless period of playing around their own box resulted in one of their defenders punting the ball forward aimlessly. Saliba headed the ball forward towards Gabriel. Before he could control and move it on, he was fouled by Antony \u2013 seemingly a man for whom a prosthetic &#8211; right leg would in no way diminish the choice of which way to move the ball \u2013 who then proceeded to kick the ball away. The referee then made out that he had blown the whistle after the aforementioned uniped had quite deliberately kicked the ball into acres of free space with nary a United shirt in sight. Had, say, Maguire done it, then perhaps this would have been credible.&nbsp; A couple of minutes later, United scored. With United playing some fairly typically lacklustre possession football at the back, the ball was deflected by Eddie into the path of Havertz, 10 yards from the edge of the United box. With all the deftness of a bull in a China shop, he proceeded to pass first time straight to a United player who pushed the ball forward to Rashford., who, by now well inside the Arsenal box, came inside Ben White and Saliba and hit an excellent shot into the bottom left past Ramsdale who had no chance. It felt as though the goal on the break was their only way they were going to score against us. It feels like they have been scoring this kind of goal against us for way too long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Never mind, it only took around 30 seconds from the restart to level the score.&nbsp; Gabriel played a pass to Martinelli who in turn played a clever back heel to Zinchenko on the left wing.&nbsp; The automatisms kicked in and the pass to Eddie yielded a first-time pass to Martinelli, now inside the penalty area. He took a touch, looked up and played a perfect lateral pass to Odegaard who placed it into the net past the left hand of Onana from just outside the penalty spot.&nbsp; A super goal. Which begged the question; why didn\u2019t we play like this before going a goal down?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On 37 minutes the Slow-Motion Running High Street mime artist that is Lindelof fouled Eddie as he looked to break down the left side of United\u2019s half and the referee had no option to but to reach for a yellow.&nbsp; A couple of minutes later the referee had the opportunity to level up the cards by correctly booking Saka for following through on the obvious favourite for this year\u2019s most punchable face in a United shirt competition, Fernandes. The game inexorably petered out as it approached half-time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Half Time Arsenal 1 United 1 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Arsenal started the second half the stronger without really threatening.&nbsp; On 58 minutes, a clever through-ball from the ever willing and excellent Nketiah put Havertz through on goal.&nbsp; As he was sandwiched between 2 United defenders he went down, and the referee immediately pointed to the spot.&nbsp; Standing right behind that goal, it looked to us that it was soft and, sure as night follows day, the referee was called over by VAR to chalk it off.&nbsp; There was contact but it\u2019s a contact sport and it didn\u2019t look deliberate. I\u2019d have been unhappy if that had been given as a penalty against us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After a period of possession from Arsenal to no real end, in the 76<sup>th<\/sup> minute we brought on Jesus, Tomiyasu and Vieira for Eddie, Zinchenko and Havertz respectively.&nbsp; On 80 the game should have been over when a jinking run from Martinelli enabled Odegaard to shift the ball out wide to Ben White who in turn banged in a low cross behind the United defence.&nbsp; Saka hit his short poorly first time and the keeper saved.&nbsp; If only he had taken the time to control the ball and then shoot. United made some changes seemingly bringing on a number of characters from the Chamber of Horrors. Someone has truly been round there with the Ugly Stick. On 87, said Ugly Stick victim Garnacho scored on a breakaway. VAR did its job and cancelled it out for offside. As far as I could see, VAR got it wrong but who cares.&nbsp; We then moved into 8 minutes of time added on, largely for the time wasting Onana had perpetrated. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Arsenal piled on the pressure during injury time, moving the opposition around, to no great effect, other than pure attrition. Then on 96, Rice controlled a corner at the far post and hammered a shot which took a deflection off Jonny Evans past Onana.&nbsp; The stadium went nuts. Arsenal then went and added another, from our own breakaway with Vieira passing into space behind the United defence for the excellent Jesus to wrap it up. Limbs. Pandemonium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Final Score Arsenal 3 United 1<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Reflections: 3 points<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol type=\"1\"><li>Havertz is not doing enough to merit his place in the first XI. This is not an apprentice, learning on-the-job. He has come in as a German national team regular on a big ticket (not his fault) and big wages (nobody else\u2019s fault).&nbsp; His air shot on 12 minutes when he was unmarked in the area could happen to anyone. The terrible pass which led to the United goal was straight out of the pre-2021 Xhaka play book. The crowd continue to be very patient. &nbsp;&nbsp;If he is going to play the Xhaka role then we need someone who is an improvement.&nbsp; He does need to up his game markedly.<\/li><li>United have been scoring breakaway goals against the Arsenal, when pinned into their half for extended periods, for more than 20 years. They scored one today and could have had more. Outside of his goal, Rashford, a hugely talented player, barely had a touch. At some point, we need to understand they are going to use this is their primary strategy and prepare accordingly.<\/li><li>We have gathered 10 points from 12 without being anywhere near our form of last season.&nbsp; This is encouraging.&nbsp; At the same time, even when we weren\u2019t playing well last season, we didn\u2019t look as disjointed and out of touch as we have so far this season.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>Were now a little more than 10% of the way through the season so there is plenty of time to settle, develop and iron out the faults.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images First game of the season for me and like a 6-year-old eagerly anticipating Christmas, I couldn\u2019t wait until the one-more-sleep was over and I could finally open my presents. Hence I was up, to use The Guv\u2019nor\u2019s term, at sparrow\u2019s fart, anxious and excited. 21CG, with all the wisdom of youth, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8314"}],"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=8314"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8339,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8314\/revisions\/8339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}