It had to be Fabregas. Fabregas, who has stalled in the past few games reclaimed his claim to the throne with a brilliant last-ditch solo effort to blast the ball into the net from distance. Walcott then followed up in extra time to square the ball to Adebayor to put the match beyond doubt. Arsenal, the first English team to ever beat AC Milan at the San Siro.
About time. Arsenal dominated the game, only looking exposed in the first 15 minutes when Milan threatened. The ref, appropriately enough, was wearing Milanese colors, making a series of terrible calls against Arsenal. The most egregious was giving Hleb a yellow card for diving, which apparently translates to "falling down under a tackle that took out his legs but none of the ball." Shocking.
At any rate, Arsenal are threw to the last eight. I hope we get another "big team." We seem to do better against the big guns.
Ugh. Arsenal appear to have hit a wall. While Manchester United are on a tear, routinely trouncing teams by four goals, Arsenal can barely find the net at all. Today Arsenal scored twice - once for Aston Villa (thanks, Senderos!) and once in the last minute of the match (I dislike you less than I did before, Bendtner), but it looked like a much lesser team than the hitherto dominant Arsenal.
Things can't continue like this. I'm starting to worry whether Arsenal will finish in the top two. The team lacks any appetite in front of goal, except for Walcott, who had a good game (again). Adebayor's haircut seems to have left him like Sampson post-Delilah. He can't get more than an inch off the ground to drive down his headers. Very frustrating.
At any rate, this team will not win the Premiership. We need something more. More bite in front of goal. More attack from the midfield. More confidence.
Manchester United (the other English Premiership team, second only to Arsenal) is rolling out a new desktop service that will provide "video, match results and Old Trafford news in real time." The club's reasons for going with a desktop software model is interesting, if misguided:
The application gives more flexibility in delivering the service than a web-based tool because the content is pushed out by us. It is discreet and compelling because it uses rich media, is simple and easy to control.
I'm trying to find something in the above that begs for a desktop-based offering (a la Pointcast), but I'm not seeing it. I already have much the same thing in Arsenal TV. Even the vanilla Internet provides everything that is mentioned above. (Try NewsNow.)The only thing Manchester United will be doing with this service is limiting its reach to Windows users.
But then, I already knew Manchester United fans have no class. :-)
Today was a very bad day. First, Martin Taylor decided to inflict the usual strategy against Arsenal: "kick them off the pitch." He did so. Literally. Eduardo da Silva was stretchered off with his shin bone coming out of his socks (picture below). Disgraceful. Wenger's right: Taylor should be banned from the game for life. As it stands, it looks bleak as to whether 25-year old Eduardo will ever be able to play again.
Such was the day. It happened in the third minute of the game and completely dampened Arsenal's mood for the first half, when Birmingham put a ball in the net near the end of the half. After the half, however, the team came alive and Walcott drilled home his first two Premiership goals.
... Read moreI'm now very tired of Microsoft's openness pledge. I think there's more substance to it than many in the open-source community (No one seems to have noticed the ability to plug in things like ODF to Office, for example), but understand the skepticism. Microsoft has spent thirty years earning that skepticism. It's not going to fade with one announcement.
So let's talk about something else, please! I'm sick of it. :-)
How about we start with Arsenal? And maybe we could then talk about Cesc Fabregas? And how I think Arsenal will pound Juventus in next year's Champions League, Fabrizio? ;-)
These are the things that truly matter. I might be able to live under despotic patent regimes. But a life without Arsenal and soccer? Some things are too horrible to contemplate. :-)
AC Milan may be the Club World and Champions League 2007 champions, but Arsenal made them look very pedestrian today. Unfortunately, Arsenal's shooting also looked very ordinary, with the team apparently deciding to shoot every single ball directly at the AC Milan keeper. Nice plan. Worked like a charm.
Except for Adebayor's golden opportunity in the 93rd minute, Arsenal never looked like it was going to put the ball into the AC Milan net. Threatening, ever threatening, yet never finishing the job. It was like 2006/07 all over again.
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The best that can be said for today's match was that I knew Arsenal would lose going into it. With 10+ first-team players injured or otherwise unavailable, it was never going to be a good game (for Arsenal, anyway). It wasn't made any better by those Arsenal stars who did play - Fabregas and Gallas, in particular - deciding not to show up on the pitch.
Painful, painful match. Bendtner is rubbish. He gave away nearly every chance he had in the first half, which wasn't all that many since a midfield bolstered by Gilberto leaks like a sieve. Gilberto has had his day - he needs to go.
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It was an ugly match, bookended with an excellent header from Senderos and then a finishing touch from Adebayor, but the rest of the 90 minutes were nothing to write home about.
Eduardo seemed too tentative to shoot; Adebayor was invisible; and the rest of the team seemed to mull around the fringes of the box, passing and passing and...passing. Not the best display, but at least it put the team five points clear at the top of the table and made up more ground on Manchester United's goal differential.
These are the "ugly" games you just have to win, even if they're not pretty. Arsenal won. I wish it would have been prettier. But I'll take the win regardless.
Especially when it comes at the expense of Mark Hughes. I can't stand that guy.
Despite the three goals (two more from Adebayor - the man is second only to Ronaldo in goal tally for the season), today's performance left something to be desired. Namely, hunger in front of goal. Even Adebayor's last goal probably should have first seen a Fabregas shot. The midfield kept laying off the goal, looking for penetrating passes rather than driven shots. We need both, of course, but it's worrisome that today looked like last year's Arsenal: tentative and probing...ever probing.
Clichy had his first big groaner of a mistake today, too, giving Manchester City its lone goal. Clichy is normally fantastic, so I hesitate to single him out, but we really need to gain on Manchester United's goal differential, as the season may come down to that. We won back some ground on ManUnited, but I would have liked to have seen a 4-0 scoreline, which is what going into halftime at 2-0 might have led to.
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It was bound to happen. No, not another Adebayor goal. At his rate, that's bound to happen almost regardless of whether he steps onto the pitch. No, this time it was Fabregas who surprised by returning to the score line for the first time since November. I haven't been able to watch the game yet but listened to the last 20 minutes while driving down Highway 101 in Silicon Valley, my trustee broadband card working overtime to keep streaming Arsenal TV for me.
Blessed technology.
Despite Fabregas' return as a scorer, the match really belonged to Flamini.
Adebayor heads it home
It was he who set up Adebayor's header into the net, and it was he who drilled an absolute screamer into the net from 25 yards. Flamini, who I reviled and despised last season, has become Arsenal's secret weapon.
This puts Arsenal top of the Premiership, though Manchester United can reclaim the top spot tomorrow when it plays Portsmouth at Old Trafford tomorrow. If only Chelsea and ManU can lose tomorrow, I shall be a very happy man.
