The long international break went without any Arsenal player suffering a severed limb or things of that sort. We Arsenal fans have become accustomed to seeing the lads suffer all sorts of strange injuries, so no one would have been surprised. The game that followed was very un-Arsenally, if there’s such a word, as the performance of the team looked very disjointed with the addition of fresh blood into the starting XI.
Rob Holding had endured a fantastic start to his Arsenal career and it was important to ensure his feet remained on the ground. Coupled with the fact that we just signed a new center back for a whopping 35 million quid, it was expected that Skhodran Mustafi was Laurent Koscielny’s new partner in defense. With a game against Nottingham Forest and Lord Bendtner in the horizon, Holding will get more chances to shine. I think Mustafi had a good game, but when you play alongside Koscielny, his influence rubs off on you.
On the other end of the pitch, Lucas Perez didn’t do badly in his first Arsenal performance and almost opened his goalscoring account when he worked well with Mesut Ozil but sadly, some bloke put his body on the line and denied the new boy his shot at glory. He shouldn’t fret though – there is a lot of football to go round and I’m sure there will be plenty of goals for our new #9.
As for the goals, I would say I was kinda surprised for both of them. Maybe Petr Cech could have done better for Dusan Tadic’s free kick but he did more than enough to atone for the error with some top notch quality saves. Arsenal’s equalizer came from Koscielny but it was the kinda goal strikers dream of scoring.
https://youtu.be/MK6Q10fuEvk
Fair play to Perez for making a nuisance of himself for the defender to make that error which allowed Koscielny to volley that incredible overhead kick that gave Fraser Forster no chance. There was a lot of controversy surrounding the penalty that led to Santi Cazorla’s winning goal but the pressure was really intense, as he had a great deal for the arguments with the referee to subside, as well as Koscielny’s facial injury treatment.
Many Southampton fans will feel hard done by but in all honesty, I don’t care. Sometimes, you get what you don’t deserve. All focus will be moved to tonight’s game in Paris.
Sayonara
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