A bad day at the office for the Gunners

ukevents.net · Joined: 15 Dec 2003 Posts: 2390

A bad day at the office for the Gunners

The title race took another agonising twist as Arsenal failed to exploit a one-man advantage over struggling Birmingham City in Saturday’s early kick-off. A brace from James McFadden, whose last gasp equaliser denied the Gunners their first win in three games, came after Theo Walcott had twice punished some slack defending. The game was overshadowed, however, by a horrific injury to Croatian, Eduardo Da Silva, that resulted in calls for the perpetrator to be banned from playing football by an irate Arsene Wenger.

The Arsenal striker suffered a double compound fracture following an initially innocuous but evidently horrendous high challenge from Birmingham’s Martin Taylor. Only two minutes of the first half had elapsed before Taylor raised his studs off the ground and, with locked knees, snapped Eduardo’s leg. The challenge left the Brazilian-born player incapacitated and the other Arsenal players visibly nauseous. Taylor received a straight red card for the offence, while Eduardo received a stretcher and some badly needed oxygen.

“If that is football, then we should stop it altogether”, said Wenger. “I knew something like this would happen one day. It goes with the idea that to beat Arsenal, you have to kick Arsenal”. Following the game Wenger retracted his initial statement, sighting the heat of the moment as the reason for his outburst. A wise decision it would seem.

For the rest of the first half the Arsenal players struggled to contend with their lively opposition. On 28 minutes McFadden was controversially brought down 20 yards out by Flamini and struck the resulting free kick into the top left corner. Replays showed that Almunia, who had been recalled to the Arsenal first team, managed to get a hand to the ball but to no avail.

Arsenal came out a different side after the re-start and within 10 minutes had equalised and taken the lead after two goals from Theo Walcott. The 18-year old pounced on a loose ball from a corner and finished from eight yards. Five minutes later Walcott gave Arsenal the lead after capitalising on an error from Liam Ridgewell and finishing well.

At the other end Ridgewell’s blunder was eclipsed by an even more shambolic piece of defending from Gael Clichy. The usually composed left-back allowed Parnaby to steal the ball in the eighteen-yard box and then, in trying to make amends, brought him crashing down deep in injury time. McFadden emphatically converted the spot-kick for his second goal of the game. The whole episode gave Gallas a funny turn, with the French defender taking his frustration out on an innocent sideboard. The real moment of despair came at the final whistle when he sat cross-legged on the pitch, a good few minutes after the rest of the Arsenal players trudged off.

Judging by Gallas’s reaction you would be forgiven for thinking that Arsenal’s title challenge was over. With Eduardo out for the rest of the season and Robin Van Persie still recovering from a thigh injury, Arsenal will be relying even more on Adebayor in the next weeks. Victory against Aston Villa at the Emirates next Saturday would go a long way to settling a few nerves and getting Arsenal back on track. As gruesome as Eduardo’s injury was, to accuse Taylor of malice is vilifying an innocent player and forgetting that, in football, accidents sometimes occur, however unfortunate.

Written by Michael for UKEvents.net