The new home of football

Arsenal 1-1 Everton

A bit of a frustrating day again, and a bit of a pattern emerging at the Grove. We let in a foolish goal, then we struggle to break the opponents down before clawing it back to 1-1. It’s the third time this has happened.

First thing, credit must go to Everton, who as predicted, were our toughest league opponents in our new home. It’s easy to see why they don’t let a huge amount of goals in, and with Andy Johnson they have the most ferret-like striker in the division. He must be so frustrating to play against.

It wasn’t pretty football at times, but Moyes’s job is to get a result and he did it using all the tricks he knew.

But enough about them. You’ve got to say it’s perhaps Wenger’s biggest test to work out how to break down stubborn opponents who play five in the middle and disrupt our rhythm. The formation is a perfectly acceptable tactic – one we employ ourselves in Europe to good effect – and disrupting our rhythm seems to be the best way for teams who can’t outplay us to take us on. Nevertheless, we need to work out what to do against teams like that.

We also need to cut out those sloppy goals. To my mind all three we’ve let in at home have been avoidable, and yesterday it was Toure’s turn to make an uncharacteristic error. It was a poor goal, and to go 1-0 down against a team like that is inviting frustration.

On the plus side, we are still creating stuff, Rosicky is looking better and better, van Persie is coming back to form and Fabregas remains a teen genius.

And I tried a beef and onion pie at the ‘reduced’ price of £3. It was very nice.

Final note – congratualations to Armand Traore, Matthew Connolly, Mark Randall and Denilson, who are now official first team players.

Denilson got the number 15, Connolly managed a number in the 30s (33), while poor old Randall and Traore were down in the 40s (43 and 45 respectively).

Tell me now – why is there a gap from 33 to 43? Eh?

It’s not important I know. But why.