By Boris Mellor
October 4 2012

Three - one was perhaps rather flattering, and Olympiacos rather unlucky to leave Arsenal with a 3 goal deficit, but three goals aren’t to be turned down so Arsenal fans left the stadium reasonably happy. With only a minute to go I was pondering on why Arsenal were playing no better than during the same match last year when they beat Olympiacos  2-1.

Then Ramsey scored the third goal on 90 minutes and I stopped pondering, after all the team produced a lot of dodgy defending in the same match last year. However, Chamberlain didn’t play as well as last year when he scored, and the other scorer was Santos. RvP didn’t play last year, he was serving out his suspension, I assume.

The difference this time, although the performance was similar, was that it was three clearly defined forwards that scored. Gervinho the  first with a daisy cutter, I was at the far end, and to me it appeared that the keeper had ages to stop the ball, but for whatever reason he failed. The crowd celebrated and sung 1 nil to the Arsenal, followed by you only sing when you’re winning. Somewhat ironic as only 3 minutes later the Greeks headed in an equaliser and you could hear a pin drop after that.

At half time I met up with Simon68, a regular on this forum, and we both agreed that the Greeks were good value for their draw. We agree that the midfield wasn’t working, but couldn’t quite agree why, but did agree that only Gervinho was getting into the box. We felt changes were needed sooner than later, but had no confidence that would be the case. Simon felt that Ramsey and Giroud should come on as soon as possible. Simon proceeded to work out an intricate code method that Wenger could use to signal the changes

When the Gunners came back on the crowd urged them on, and it seems to work as Podolksi scored a great goal from a tight angle right in front of me. Well right in front of me and the 26 rows in front of me, then all the tiers before that. Nonetheless it was a good view, and it’s what I love about floodlight football when you see a goal at your own end. You seem to have so much more time to take it all in. He scores when he wants sung the exultant faithful.

The crowd amused itself, and perhaps relieved the tension, by shouting “who” after every Greeks substitutions name. This was considered very funny as the crowd genuinely hadn’t heard of any of the players, least of all pronounce their names. The only person we did know, Roy Carroll remained firmly on the bench.

Koscielny and Vermaelen continued defending in the manner to which they are accustomed, at least these days, so there were plenty of nervous moments. The 2-1 was looking very fragile, Walcott was sent on to up the tempo and to clearly look for another goal on 71 minutes, the crowd gave him a good reception, but clearly more power was needed, and on 80 minutes Ramsey and Giroud were sent on. Clearly the signalling ahd been worked out and was invisible to the human eye. No doubt Wenger was relieved to be sitting in the dry, quite a few fans sitting in the front had fled to the bars to escape the rain, only to find them alcohol free.

From my viewpoint it was Ramsey’s arrival that finally gave Arsenal the bite they needed, or perhaps the unlucky Greeks had tired. Either way the team now parked themselves into Olympiacos’s  half. The Arsenal goal no longer seemed under threat, with the best defending carried out next to the Greek’s left side corner pin.

As some of the crowd left for the last train home to the counties Ramsey found himself in space bearing down on the keeper, the Welshman, as cool as you like dinked it past the keeper. Any hope of a point for the Greeks was now dead and buried.

A friend text me, “I knew we would do it”, sure we all did, I even predicted 3-0 to the Arsenal, but it didn’t seem that nailed on at half time.

It was quite good in the end Arsenal 3 Olympiacos 1

Discussion started by Arsenal Times , 04/10/2012 19:14

Arsenal Times
04/10/2012 19:14

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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2012:10:07:18:50:54 by Padre Pio.

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Rockstaar
04/10/2012 20:30

Padre, your ghost writer is phenomenal, I felt like I was at the match reading that

2 quality articles in a row...give the lad a raise


[arsenalsigs.blogspot.com]

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Merlion96
05/10/2012 01:12

Nay, business as usual.

We will win our firist 3 games and then lose or draw next 2 games, struggling to qualify in a "must win" last game.....that is business as usual.

let's hope for the very first time that we win all our first 4 games for automatic qualificaiton to knock-out stage, field 2nd stringers for the next 2 games, looking down from top of the table.

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