As Easy as They Come

By: Martin | April 27th, 2009

Well, there’s not a tremendous amount to say about that game. We won fairly comfortably–2-0 is hardly the most dominant of scorelines, but you really never got the sense that we were coming away from the game with anything other than 3 points.

Fabregas scored both goals and had to have been the man of the match. In all fairness, the first goal could have been ruled out for offsides–Bendter was offsides, and even though he didn’t touch or play the ball, the keeper did have an argument that he affected the play by screening his vision. But it wasn’t called, and Fabregas sealed the deal with a second-half goal. Really, aside from one effort by Aliadiere, Boro never really threatened Almunia.

Frankly, I couldn’t believe Boro played with as little passion as they did. For a team facing relegation, they were surprisingly complacent and ineffective, and now look nearly certain to go down next season.

The good news was that it was a pretty easy win, and the 3 points basically seals a top 4 finish, our 13th season of finishing 4th or higher. It was also nice to see Cesc get on the scoresheet–he’s not a goal-scorer, and doesn’t need to score to still be a very effective offensive player, but if he can pop up with a goal every now and then it adds an extra dimension to the attack. Our backline, troubled as of late, throw up a clean sheet, which will hopefully give them confidence going into Wednesday. Finally, it was good that the game was wrapped up early, which allowed Cesc and Walcott to come off early, ensuring they will be rested for Wednesday’s match-up.

But there was some bad news as well. Silvestre had to go off injured at half-time. We definitely need all hands on deck on the backline at the moment, but given how dreadful Silvestre has been lately, maybe this news isn’t even all that bad in light of the fact that Djourou is back and played the second-half. He didn’t look great, but hopefully getting some match experience will help him get ready for Wednesday.

For me, though, the main bad news may be that the team looked a little too good yesterday. Let me explain. Fabregas played forward yesterday, behind Bendtner. Since he played well and popped up and scored two goals, Wenger is apparently thinking about sticking with him in this position for Wednesday’s game. With the usual caveats about Wenger knowing way more than I’ll ever know, I’ll just say that I really think Cesc functions much better in a deep-lying playmaker role than playing behind the striker, and would have a lot of problems finding space to make plays if he’s called upon to go too far forward and deal with Giggs, Carrick, and/or Scholes.

Yesterday was also interesting because Wenger played Arshavin on the left and moved Nasri back to a holding/supporting center midfield role. He’s also gone on record as considering keeping Nasri there on Wednesday. Not that I don’t think Nasri could function in that role, but I think he’s shown himself to be an effective left winger all year and is best suited to stay there for the time being. He played well against Boro, but dealing with Ronaldo and Rooney would be an altogether different proposition.

The real question here is that is now, coming up on our most important match of the season, the ideal time to be experimenting with the lineup? You’d think by this point we had a pretty good idea of each players’ strengths and weaknesses and wouldn’t be messing around. Which brings up the next question, which is whether Wenger is considering these or not, or is just being coy. By playing guys in different positions/roles and then coming out in the press and saying he’s considering leaving them there for Wednesday, he may plant a seed of confusion in the mind of Alex Ferguson in trying to plan his own lineup for Wednesday. Look, I love Wenger and wouldn’t swap for 10 Fergies, but it has to be admitted that Ferguson is the superior tactician of the two, and giving him pause about who we’re going to play where has to be considered a smart move. I hope and believe this is what’s going on–if for no other reason than I can’t figure out who else would play on the left. Arshavin’s ineligible and van Persie’s out injured. If Nasri doesn’t play there, then we’re talking about starting Vela, who’s very promising but untested and hasn’t seen action in quite some time, or Denilson, who would be playing out of position and is in very poor form at the moment. But for what it’s worth (which isn’t much), I think all this talk of changing things around dramatically Wednesday is probably just a smokescreen.

United preview coming tomorrow.