Missing: Ruthless Streak Villa 0 Arsenal 0

Time for Change
By Boris Mellor
December 31 2005

In the pre-match preview I noted "According to Henry Arsenal have ‘rediscovered their ruthless streak’; and if they can maintain the kind of tempo they did in the first half against Portsmouth then they should win this match comfortably."

Well the ruthless streak went missing after its fleeting appearance against Portsmouth; of course I should have known that when two high-scoring teams meet the end result is often a bore draw. Most of the tempo on display was that of Villa closing Arsenal down. In this they were assisted by Arsenal's constant miss hit passes from all over the pitch. Arsenal were rarely cohesive, or playing at tempo. It would be tempting to say that the whole team had played badly, but that would be to miss out on the sterling work of Campbell and Toure.

Villa crowded the midfield making it difficult for Arsenal to get their passing game going, but they went beyond that often putting Arsenal under sustained pressure. They created slightly more chances than Arsenal, but Lehmann had only one difficult save to make. However Sorenson had no seriously difficult saves to make at all, but that is not to say that Arsenal did not threaten the Villa goal. Freddy had one brilliant shot that just clipped the corner of the crossbar. Henry shot wide, and Sorenson comfortably saved a decent effort by van Persie. Flamini blasted way over the bar from the edge of the area.

On the 88th minute Toure missed an open goal from only a few yards out. It could be argued it would have been an injustice if it had gone in, but it certainly would have been ruthless. Overall this was a poor performance, which perhaps, could have been worse if Kolo had not saved the Gunners’ bacon on so many occasions.

The midfield of Flamini, Hleb and Fabregas lacked balance and cohesion, they all had their individual moments, but it never worked as an effective unit. Without Reyes the team lacked energy, pace and balance.

Finally a comment about the awful Uriah Rennie, his dreadful refereeing probably made no real difference to the overall result so it's not that that I'm complaining about. But how can a Villa player not even be cautioned for putting his studs into van Persie's shoulder and neck, and yet Cygan get a yellow for a tackle when he clearly played the ball.