Arsenal 2 – Bolton 1: Arsenal Do Just Enough

On to the quarterfinals, but juuuuuuust barely.

So Brenton got in touch with me yesterday, to see if, since I was going to be watching the match on Arsenal Player, I could come out of retirement to write a match review. So . . . guess who’s back? Back again….

Having given myself that over the top introduction, this match report is sure to be pretty anticlimactic, I’m afraid. It wasn’t the best of matches — it was raining pretty hard, many of the players involved were the Reserves, and there was an element of sloppiness to the affair. But give Bolton credit: they showed up and fought hard, and it really could have easily had a different outcome.

I felt like Arsenal really controlled the first-half. Not that we were world beaters, exactly, but Bolton really didn’t look like too much danger at all. We had a couple of chances early — Chamberlain, in particular, should have done better with a couple of good chances where he had the ball in good position on the right-hand side of the box. Park fizzed a good long-range shot across the goalkeeper’s body and forced Bogdan into a decent save. Vermaelen uncorked a laser beam of a free kick, but it was pretty close to center of the net and Bogdan deflected over. Park tried to catch the goalkeeper leaning the wrong direction, but his soft but precise soft was turned aside by Bogdan. But I honestly don’t remember Bolton having a single shot on target or legitimate scoring chance in the first half.

But predictably, that would change shortly after the break. Coquelin made a poor pass back across the middle of the pitch to Frimpong, and completely missed that Muamba was so close to Frimpong. Muamba reacted well and arrived at Frimpong at the same time as the ball, played the ball out wide, and when the ball was pulled back into the center of the box, Muamba had continued his run into the center of the box and finished superbly into the top of the net — Fabianski had no chance, and it was 1-0 Bolton against the run of play. The defensive organization wasn’t great — Yennaris was caught upfield and couldn’t get back, so Squillaci followed the ball out wide, and Vermaelen ran into the goal-mouth, Coquelin didn’t sprint back, and as a result, there was no one at all covering Muamba’s run. Coquelin mainly at fault, I’d say. Hated to see Muamba score, but I’m always kind of happy when Arsenal academy products make good careers for themselves, and he’s certainly done that, so fair play to him.

But it wouldn’t stand for long. Just a few minutes later, Yossi had the ball out wide, passed it across to Arshavin, who ran with the ball into the box. And, when Zat Knight for some reason kept backing off of him instead of closing him down and forcing him to get rid of the ball, Arshavin unleashed a deadly accurate shot across Bogdan just into the far corner. Great strike, and just like that it was 1-1. But it wouldn’t stay like that for long. Arsenal had the ball on the break, and the ball came to Arshavin, who couldn’t put the ball through to Park, who made a run past the Bolton backline. But Arshavin waited for Park to get back onside, and mysteriously, no Bolton defender felt that Park needed marking, so Arshavin calmly slotted the ball over to him once he was back on, and Park took an absolutely magnificent right-footed strike across the goalkeepers body, and it was perfectly bent and arced to get around the keeper and go just inside the far post. 2-1 Arsenal.

And that’s how it would stay, but not without a considerable amount of drama. Frustratingly, going up 2-1, Arsenal seemed to get complacent, and Bolton ratcheted up the intensity level a bit. Bolton very nearly made it 2-2 on a long range shot from Chris Eagles that looked harmless enough, but Fabianski flubbed it, and was lucky to see it deflect just (and I mean just) over the bar and onto the roof of his net — very nearly a howler that would have brought back bad memories of 2009-2010 Fabianski. Klasnic was put through on goal not long after and forced Fabianski into a good save.

Then, the game inexplicably turned into the “Gary Cahill: star striker” show. He had a good header on net from a corner that Fabianski just turned aside. He had another shot in the box which was saved. For some reason we were having all kinds of problems dealing with him. And then, late on, the ball was pulled back for Klasnic just outside the six-yard box, and he skied his shot well over the bar when it would have been much easier to put it on target. Cahill had another decent chance in the box late on but his shot was off target. Overall, the last 4-5 decent scoring chances of the match were all Bolton’s, and it was a pretty big let-off that Arsenal did not concede an equalizer somewhere in there. But we managed to tough it out and keep it 2-1, and that’s how it would end.

(DISCLOSURE: I saw in some of the post-match comments that Coyle was very upset that a penalty had not been awarded to Cahill. I hate to go all Wenger on you, but um . . . I didn’t see it. I watched it pretty late, so maybe I dozed off for a second, or was talking to my wife, or was playing with one of my cats, or went to the bathroom, but I honestly missed that. I think Coyle is generally a pretty solid dude, so I suspect there’s probably something to it . . . but I got nothing. Sorry.)

You’ll forgive me if I don’t do a full player ratings for this one, mainly due to time constraints. But I’ll just give some general, disorganized thoughts on the performances:

Arshavin was quite clearly the man of the match for me. Finally being given a run out in his preferred central midfield/”#10″ position, he really shone. His equalizing goal was superb, and I was very impressed by his patience in the build up to the second goal — seeing Park was clearly offside and being surrounded by defenders, he could have panicked, and either tried to go wide or pass back, or simply put the through ball through and let Park get whistled for offside. Instead, he simply slowed the play down and waited for the defenders to keep drifting back and for Park to turn his run to get back onside. Then he played the ball out to Park in acres of space and let Park finish it. It’s the kind of play that looks quite easy, but a lot of midfielders wouldn’t have the patience and calm to make it.

More than that, though, you could just tell he was “up for it.” I was a bit surprised to see him take on such a leadership role yesterday, but he seemed to be consistently barking orders to his teammates and directing their runs and positioning. Even after he scored his goal, in the celebration man-pile, you could see him talking to Chamberlain about his runs and positioning. Long-time readers will know I am not Arshavin’s biggest fan, but I have been saying since Cesc left that Arshavin is our best option in the attacking midfield position — it is the position that gets the most out of his strengths (superb passer, high creativity, ability to find pockets of space in crowded areas) and minimizes the harmful affects of his weaknesses (not a position where blazing speed is required, failure to close opponents down much less harmful when he’s got 4 defensive-minded players behind him). And you could kind of tell that Arshavin viewed yesterday as an audition of sorts, one that he passed with flying colors.

After the match Wenger was noncommittal, saying that “He will play anywhere we ask him to, but I have a lot of players who want to play in the middle.” (In fairness, he was very complimentary of Arshavin’s performance). But while that may be true, I would humbly suggest that, as he showed today, none of them are as effective as Arshavin, and none of them (except perhaps, eventually, Jack Wilshere or Chamberlain) are best-suited to the attacking/playmaker role. I would like to see Arshavin given a chance to repeat yesterday’s performance in one of the bigger competitions, but I’m not holding my breath.

Park was also excellent. The goal was a superb finish, he took a couple of other decent long-range shots, and generally impressed. He looks like a real player, and this, combined with Chamakh’s lackluster performance on the weekend, makes me think there’s a new sheriff in town (and by “sheriff” I mean, of course, “back-up striker”). He’s not the strongest player in the world, physically, and didn’t look much of an aerial threat, but he can get the ball down and play it, is not afraid to shoot, and appears to be quite good at finding space deep in enemy territory and timing runs well.

Fabianski was generally solid except for that one near cock-up in the second half. Yennaris didn’t look a world-beater, but worked hard and will be able to hold his head high after his debut. I wasn’t too impressed by Miquel at left-back, but I’m somewhat forgiving of that given that it’s not his position and with his speed it’s not a position he’s naturally well-suited to play. It was good to have Vermaelen back, I guess (more on that below), but he had some moments but looked a bit rusty to me, and Squillaci was Squillaci.

Didn’t think Coquelin or Frimpong had the best of games — Coquelin was at fault for the Bolton goal, and the two of them as a unit seemed unable to stem the tide when Bolton ratcheted up the pressure in the second half. Although, in Frimpong’s defense, things seemed to get worse when he was brought off for Ozyakup. Yossi was very solid and involved in the build-up to Arshavin’s goal. The OC wasn’t terrible, but never really looked like doing anything with several good chances he had. This may serve as a reminder to the “ZOMG — Chamberlain is better than Theo was at this age . . . Chamberlain is better than Theo now . . . Chamberlain is better than Maradona in his prime!” crowd clamoring for his automatic first-team inclusion that he’s still very, very young, and he’s going to have games where he’s ineffective while he develops, and overhyping him at this stage of his career does no one any good.

The subs — Ryo, Ozyakup, and Boateng — didn’t make a big impact for me, but they all came on pretty late so it wouldn’t really be fair to comment one way or the other.

The big news late on was Thomas Vermaelen’s injury. If you don’t like “I told you so”s, I advise you to skip the next little bit of this write-up. When credible sources began to report on Monday that Vermaelen was going to play, I said things on Twitter (where you can follow me at @MartinArsenalFC — shameless plug!) like “Well, he may come on for a late substitute cameo, but he won’t start — he’s been out 2 months and just returned to training.” But I was proven wrong when his name was on the teamsheet yesterday. I said I hope this isn’t too early and doesn’t come back to bite us. And lo and behold, there was Vermaelen limping off at the end of the match.

Now, having said that — this was apparently a calf injury (maybe just a bad cramp), not a recurrence of his Achilles problem. So there’s nothing necessarily linking this to his prior injury, and maybe something like this would have happened regardless of when he was brought back. But the fact remains that Vermalen had been in “light training” up until Monday, where he took part in his first full training session with the squad. And then he was asked to play 90 minutes in a first-team match on Tuesday.

It seemed to me beforehand, and still seems, that that is insane. Afterwards, Wenger said:

“He did very well but came off with a calf and we’re hoping it’s not too bad. But he will be short for Saturday.

“I didn’t expect a game of this intensity and it was tough game for a centre-back. I didn’t want him to come off, because there were four minutes to go and we could have conceded but he was adamant he had to come off.”

Sometimes I really think Wenger thinks “This will really piss Martin off” before he says things like that. You “didn’t expect a game of this intensity”? It’s a cup game between two top division sides for a spot in the quarterfinals. It’s not a Reserves match. It’s not a friendly. Just because Arsenal frequently treat the Carling Cup as a Reserves competition doesn’t mean other teams aren’t going to give 100% to win. I think this was a bad miscalculation to throw Vermaelen right back into first-team action after only one full training session, and we can only hope that this injury is minor and he won’t miss any substantial amount of time now. But it sounds like he’ll be out for Chelsea regardless.

And that’s about it. Through to the quarterfinals. The draw takes place on Saturday. Manchester United, Cardiff, and Crystal Palace went through yesterday, and 4 more quarterfinalists will be finalized today. Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, and Newcastle all play today (in separate matches), so it’s shaping up to be a pretty strong field, unlike last season, where so many of the big sides got knocked out early in the competition.

We’ll see. But our winning ways continue, and we’ve got a little confidence and momentum heading into the Chelsea match on Saturday. Something tells me we’ll need every bit of it.

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Category: Arsenal News, Bolton, Carling Cup, Fixtures, Match Review