Starting XI: Cech, Koscielny, Mertesacker, Monreal, Bellerin, Ramsey, Xhaka, Kolasinac, Ozil, Lacazette, Sanchez.
Subs: Wilshere, Giroud, Walcott, Holding, Iwobi, Coquelin, Macey
Arsene Wenger kept the same first team that trounced a wayward Everton side last weekend, with the very impressive looking front three of Ozil, Sanchez and Lacazette keeping their place, mirrored by the slightly less impressive back three of Mertesacker, Koscielny and Monreal also returning.
After a dire first half that luckily only ended with us going in one behind at the break, Arsenal came to life in the second half to dominate a well organised but toothless Swansea side, with a powerful display from Sead Kolasinac, scoring one and creating another for Aaron Ramsey to finish.
FIRST HALF:
Arsenal dominated the first ten minutes of the game, with almost complete spoils of the possession and two decent half chances, one resulting in a Ramsey shot being blocked and one Sanchez free kick being headed directly at the Fabianski by Mertesacker.
Then after another waffly ten minutes of ineffective Arsenal possession, Swansea obviously equalised with their first foray into our final third when Abraham slid an easy through ball to Clucas who seemed to have all the time in the world to poke it past a stranded looking Cech. 0-1, and I have to say this whole ‘dominate possession, concede first’ Arsenal way of playing in the Premier League is now becoming painfully repetitive.
This predictably kicked us up the arse a bit, but in reality all it made us do is the same thing we’d done for the first 20 minutes but faster and with a now more vocally grumpy home crowd to soundtrack our efforts. Sanchez managed to test Fabianski with a decent shot, but really Andre Ayew should have really put us in a whole world of hurt near the close when he went one on one with Cech after robbing Mertesacker, but luckily for us he was selfish and not very good so instead of squaring to the open Abraham he tried to chip it and fluffed it. Badly.
Then after much huffing and indeed puffing the half finished 0-1 to the away side.
SECOND HALF:
The second half started more brightly for the home side, when after some good work down the left hand side and a cheeky backheel from Lacazette, the ball ended up fumbling to Kolasinac who absolutely booted the ball into the back of the net to emphatically level the scores on the 51st minute. 1-1.
Kolasinac equalises for Arsenal, 1-1 pic.twitter.com/vqHcPTpw5c
— Terje (@xArsenalTerje) October 28, 2017
But Arsenal weren’t done being Arsenal so obviously had to almost concede literally a minute after scoring, when Abraham took advantage of slack defending to drill one in, only for it to be correctly called offside.
But Arsenal had finally woken up, and after Big Sead Kolasinac missed a header that he really should have scored, he atoned by laying a cross to Ramsey who gently put us ahead with with a neat near post finish. 2-1.
Ramsey puts Arsenal in front, 2-1 pic.twitter.com/wTMuMSDmnA
— Terje (@xArsenalTerje) October 28, 2017
By now Arsenal seemed to smell blood, and especially Ramsey, who took it upon himself to be the epicentre of a lot of spurned chances. First he blasted high over from a decent position, then after Lacazette almost got his head on the end of a cross, Ramsey again chipped a lovely ball over to Bellerin who connected with a lunging first time volley that kissed the crossbar and went over. Weird how we always need to go behind to play well but there you go.
Lacazette and Kolasinac were replaced by Giroud and Holding respectively, and other than a lovely Giroud volley and another drive of his that whistled past the post, the game petered out into a fairly comfortable win.
I wonder how many times arsene has seen the same game out of the 800 he managed !!! Xhaka channeling his inner pirlo was awesome to see btw.
Not too sure about that, Xhaka had a mixed day.. he must be the only player better at long passing than short.
Xhaka needs Cazorla. Ramsey spends too much time in the final third to be a Cazorla.
Xhaka needs a Vieira/Diaby type to replicate the Vieira-Petit 2-Man combo of which this combo look so to be replicating (badly).
Wilshere is the closest to Cazorla we’ve got atm. If Kolasinac isn’t fit for city I’d got with 3 in midfield in a 4-3-3 with xhaka sitting deep and wilshere and Ramsey either side of him.
this. but you know AW won’t do it.
We all hope and prayer Jack Wilshere will one day deliver on his potential but I do feel there is a narrative that he is a potential saviour but I just don’t feel it’s deserved. I just did a quick check on what Jack has actually delivered in his career and compared it to Aaron Ramsey, someone who hugely splits opinion to say it kindly.. A player pretty much the same age, same position, both have suffered terribly with injuries (Ramsey the more severe, Wilshere more frequently) and it’s quite telling. Jack Wilshere career stats Apps: 147 Goals: 7 Assists:… Read more »
Premier league stats that is! Not trying to take away from Ramsey’s milestone today
cazorla is finished
Good point.
He is essential to us at the moment without Santi.
His ball over the top helps circumvent the rigid defenses we face but also releases the forwards like Lacazette and Alexis quicker.
But he isn’t a DM and we are nominally reliant on the centre of the back 3 to help step up. In this case with per, he has to take precaution because he can get caught for pace so he tends to sit slightly deeper therefore the space around Granit needs support from Ramsey and Ozil (or wingbacks)
Xhaka was our best player.Bellerin had a stinker today and Alexis was not much better.
Good for u
Wtf are you smoking?
I thought I saw many empty seats…?
There’s only about 5 teams in the prem that this kind of performance would have gotten all three points. And if we were away from home, we would’ve lost or drawn against any other prem team. Let’s just hope we are saving the big performances for the big games. COYG!
If my uncle had a fanny he’d be my aunt. Enjoy the win!
I always enjoy a win, thanks Danny. Just pointing out this latest reprieve we are all giving Mr Wenger due to him finally deploying the Lac-San-Zil axis is still going to lead to days of almost totally ineffectual chaos, as his sides always do. So happy to have won and feel very lucky that we were playing a particularly poor team at home. Having said that, they still caused a hell of a lot of problems…
Swansea caused a lot of problems today, yes, but they lost at the end. Youl’ll rarely have an easy game in the EPL.
Anyone who follows Arsenal FC knows that Özil has been struggling with a knee injury yet you say “finally deploying”. That´s really digging deep in the nonsense to find something negative.
Has created 30 chances this season. Only De Bruyne equals that.
Wtf is a Lac-San-Zil?
It’s a Russian limousine made under license in North Korea.
Side note. Good to see Troy Deeney displaying his cojones by gouging the face of a Stoke player about half his weight. Knob.
Should’ve been a red for him.
Must be retrospective punishment. There’s no way the ref would’ve given only a yellow if he’d seen that.
Picking on the smallest player on the field too. Shawcross dived liked he’d been shot as well. Football players really are wimpy…
should have been a medal
He really is a vile fucking criminal orc. Makes shawcross look tame.
Hasn’t he had a spell in prison for assault? He sure has a different definition of cojones!
Lol at Blogs saying André Ayew should have scored when he robbed Mertesacker while André was scoring for West Ham. It’s his little brother, Jordan
the stoke knob deserved it
Never in doubt
Kola is a beautiful man beast. What a cracker! What a performance by him. Best free signing in the league for sure.
Why no pre-match news Blogs?
Because he’s playing with kangaroos
I bet he enjoyed koalasnatch today
He’s never said it right either
If we win against City and the Spuds then we’ll be pretty much in the title mix at least for that duration.
I am being optimistic again. T_T
PS – City really needs to start dropping points however.
4 points from those games would keep us in the mix
Hopefully Wenger outfoxes Guardiola like he did a couple of times in the past.
For the game against Spuds, the boys should be itching to get all 3 points, especially after a series of draws and losses in the past few games in the league against them.
However, I have been in this scenario far too many times to raise any hopes for a title fight at the moment. Top 4 looks achievable and if Spuds continue their hoodoo at Wembley, we ought to pounce and capitalize.
We all know that isn’t going to happen. It’d be a miracle if we get anything out of those games.
Spurs only drew with Swansea at home and if We can be as disciplined as we were against Chelsea I’m sure we can beat them.
Nope. They’ll press us into submission, just as Poch’s teams always do.
yeah, but unlike us they put four past the pool
Yeah. The Invincibles had 90 points, with 12 draws and 26 wins. Chelsea won the league last year with 93 points but lost 5 times. I don’t see City losing 5 times. City currently have 28 points with 28 games to go. Even if they lost 4 games (which it doesn’t seem they will) or had 6 draws (slightly more likely) they can still grab 100 points this season. I’d love us to win the league but that won’t happen this season. However, we can catch the Red Mancs. So 2nd place and a Europa League win will be successful… Read more »
City could easily lose 5 times for example 3 against top 6 and 2 against inform midtable/relegation battle teams, especially if hey go deep in the cups and have to rotate a lot
I think realistically with this year’s squad if we can get top 4 and back into the CL that is the most we can hope for. We certainly haven’t shown the consistency or level of play to be able to challenge City this year and our squad depth seems much less than in previous years so as the injuries start to mount at some point (as they will for any squad) we need to be able to stay afloat. The performance by the 2nd string vs Norwich midweek was quite worrying as many of those players will need to play… Read more »
Agree that top 4 should be and probably is our goal this season. We have some elite squad players on the bench like Giroud, Wilshere, Mustafi/Mertesacker, Ospina but some players who have performed for us during the last 2 seasons seem to have suffered a huge dip in form like Walcott, Iwobi, Coquelin and some aren’t good enough but can do a job like Elneny. Hoping Debuchy will be available this season as he is still a quality back up for RWB/RB/RCB, looked good against Norwich which did go unnoticed as there was so much focus on Eddie.
Predictions are stupid, so here’s mine: We come third, behind City (who win the league easily) and another team, and ahead of United; Chelsea miss the Champions League, as do Liverpool.
City defence is their potential Achilles heel. The wrong injury and they could let a lot of goals in, although they do have an attack which can score a lot, but not always…
There’s too many games remaining and possible injuries to know anything for sure…
dream on
It’s impressive that among the 5 chances Özil created you don’t quote one.
We won. Nothing to feel too inspired about. We won.
I bet your a barrel of laughs at party’s.
I am actually. I’m also a realist. And it’s also ‘partys’ not ‘party’s’ you illeterate fuck. And give me one good reason other than a ‘clever’ response to suggest why you disagree with my summary of today.
Parties?
Okay clever clogs, you’re right, it’s parties. But he also wrote ‘your’ instead of ‘you’re’ so he’s still a fuck of sorts.
It takes a spaniard to teach english here I see. Clever clogs – no, basic English – yes.
Illeterate?
its illiterate, not illeterate, yu illiterate fuck!
Oh the irony!!!! Also, you might want to check the rules about abusing other posters mate. And get anger management too – that helps 🙂
I was a little bit tipsy last night and just being mischievous. Although in hindsight it was a little strong. I am good fun at parties though, I won’t take that back.
Zzzzzzzzzzz
Far too many people take themselves far too seriously on here. Reading back on the comments after a bit of Sat evening tom foolery I felt a little like I was back at school. Yes, I said a ‘naughty’ word to a complete stranger when drunk after spending the afternoon at the game. And the same was said back to me, big deal. I get it’s not ideal but this is a fans forum, a bit of banter is part and parcel of the football world. But my comment was a rarity for me, been commenting on here a few… Read more »
lol, well said dan
May not like it up em, but this Arsenal are becoming specialists in coming from behind…
Man of the Kolasimatch.
Surely we should give Xhaka more praise than criticism for todays performance. His left foot is a laser guided ball launcher.
It was a better performance from him, but in regards to his form as of late, the only way to go was up.
We should really instruct him to just go looong all the time. To Lacazette, to Bellerin or to kola. Got tired of seeing Lacazette make the off movements away from defenders and have to wait for us to build up till everyone was around him. I still feel we haven’t ‘unleashed’ him yet
Xhaka has been really poor. What’s the point in playing 3 at the back and Xhaka if he isn’t organizing our play from deep?
Wenger needs to stop subbing off Lacazette everytime in other to please Giroud. We lost against Watford due to unnecessarily bringing in Giroud in a quick paced game.
3 points was crucial today as we’ve always have difficulties beating Swansea.
Need to improve massively if we are to get anything against Spuds and city
Lol Lost to Watford because we subbed in OG? What world do you live in where you can make statements like that lol
This is the fastest and most competitive league Lacazette has every played in.
On top of that he had a break at Xmas in all those previous seasons.
So don’t you think that trying to protect him a bit, especially in the last 10 minutes when he’s tired (and therefore more prone to injury) may possibly help him in the second half of the season when his body is moving into new territory exhaustion-wise?
Jordan Ayew, fam. The brother is long gone from Wales.
Happy about the win, but this pattern of getting one nil down after dominating the game is getting worrisome… It keeps happening over and over again and we’re way past the point where “bad luck” and “coincidence” can be accepted as explaination. Cost us heavy points this season already, another loss and we’re -12 from the top. Moment of truth next week! COYG
Great win, felt it would be a very disapointing afteroon. Sead made the difference, hope he is not out for city. And Troy fucking Dickheadny lol, what a twat.
These types of games are what Arseblog talked about a few weeks ago that have been the basis of our past 13 years.
Somebody shoulda asked him that at the AGM. Why can’t he get his players to stay focused every game?
EVERY SINGLE GAME. It’s only 90 minutes. They are not doing it 9-5 !!
I said this a few weeks back and i will say it again. It doesn’t matter if Xhaka plays shit against teams in the bottom half but he needs to be at his best against City and Spurs to justify his place.
Xhaka will have lot’s of space in behind the channels against City especially.
City is the type of game that we should be winning on set pieces.
City are vulnerable to long accurate ball over the top into their box. They conceded two today in such manner We will need to patrol around the space surrounding granit because he tends to sit deeper but isn’t particularly (as we all know) an apt tackler. Nominally Mustafi sweeps up and comes forward to fill the gal (Elneny did this midweek against a lesser team Norwich). With Per, he has to be cautious of getting caught out so those close to Granit (either mids say Ramsey and Ozil or Alexis…depending who is staying back) or the fullbacks will have to… Read more »
lovely team win….everyone in on the score sheet over the pass few games can only be good, going up against the bigger teams next two weeks. we also now have no fear being a goal down. Its all gonna fall in place like all good team does….it’s a process.
coygs.
We won’t get away with the slack defending against City though. And we will need to be more incisive in front of goal.
Plenty of creation but far too cavalier still.
Good to see OG come on and have a couple of decent cracks at goal. Thought he should have been put on earlier.
Same as last week. Still have to rectify things.
1) Easily distracted at the back. Porous to say the least.
2) Spurn too many chances. We create enough but we have to punish teams ruthlessly now.
MOTM…Sead.
Ramsey with another energetic display. If he can only find form in front of goal like before he would be scoring heaps.
Both wings threatened today with Swans electing to cover the centre.
City next up. Time to take 3 points off their lead and get us closer. COYG. Onwards and upwards.
If we win against city and spurs we will be in the mix? City will eviscerate our midfield and run circles around per. We couldn’t beat stoke , Watford on the road and got crushed by a crap Liverpool team.
City and their 500 million in spending these past two seasons will clobber us.
And kane will score a few against us.
We beat a crap everton and crap Swansea team and lost to a crap Watford team. Don’t get carried away.
OTOH that’s the sort of loser mentality the team cannot afford. We should see these match ups as opportunities not view them with dread and put in tepid performances. If we beat City (who shipped 2 goals today carelessly), we will be only 6 points off with 27 games to go.AND Spurs the next weekend will see us put them in our shadow (again) BUT first things first. We need to tighten up the space around Granit and behind AND we need to be far less wasteful with the myriad chances we continue to create. As Curtis will tell you,… Read more »
Just find something else to do mate…you don’t need football
Kane is injured. Will be out.
City are weak down there left side and otmendi a liability and a red card waiting to happen.
You’re deluded, mate. We’re going to lose both games.
Dont watch the game
Let’s just wait and see what happens shall we. If we are realistic Man City look in another league to us at the moment but it’s a funny old game and anything could happen.
We know on our day we can match anyone, it’s just we don’t have many of those days anymore and we could just as easily lose 5-0 as we might beat them.
West Brom got two against City, they narrowly beat Bournemouth at the start of the season. If we as fans can’t hope then if we do get clobbered, we should all just come on arseblog on said evening and have a laugh and shake of hands and hugs. No whining
You don’t believe our team and manager can get anything then I wonder why most of us get pissed
Lol every game is different,
Thats like someone saying City had to go to penalties to beat the Wolves. They must suck
Actually worse than that. Wolves had their second string out for that game, while Citeh ended up with most of their starting XI on the park.
They obviously came with a game plan to defend deep and make us work hard to break them down which we couldn’t do in the first half.
Cech is causing us some problems with his mistakes. Hopefully he can iron those out. We need to start thinking of a backup or a new keeper.
Excellent 2nd half just wish we could take more of our chances!
COYG!
To be fair to Cech, great stop against Ayew to keep us in it.
We had a great keeper but sold him for a song. C
The Xhaxa Ramsey pairing needs an upgrade…
Until our engine room eijer grts repaired or upgraded, we won’t challenge for the title for a while.
I’d say our starting choice 2-man midfield is possibly the worst of the top 5 clubs.
Especially because one of them doesn’t even fancy playing in midfield.
At least they’re both better than Henderson (If you include Liverpool in top 5)! ?
Henderson does a job IN MIDFIELD
can’t deny that. Our midfield two isn’t as good as in midfield duties
Other than a couple of decent lofted cross-field passes I thought Xhaka was really poor today. He needs to improve the accuracy of his short passes and in that role we must have someone who plays the ball quickly to keep a high tempo. I’m also not sure what’s happened to Bellerin. Really looks like a player with no confidence. Constantly playing the easy ball and scared to take a man on. Was impressed with Ozil’s tracking back today and I’m always delighted (and shocked) when I see him make a tackle or outmuscle an opposition player. Great result in… Read more »
If only Jack and Santi were not made of cotton wool.
We seem to play in a massive circle because we have two players in the middle of the park who are good at certain things and woeful at others…How Wenger wants the team to play is detrimental to there skillsets ontop of their other limited ones.
That being said Ramsey’s finish was alot harder than it looked and Xhaxa’s long passing led to both goals.
Blogs, can you please put up Kolasinac’s showboat pass to Sanchez.. Just because..
Why is this getting downvoted? It was a moment of brilliant, a piece of technique nobody knew Kolasinac had in his bag of awesomeness… Deserves all the replays and praise it can get!!
The next two games will really tell where we are this season. Good to win but we are as shaky as usual.
They did not equalise, they went ahead.
I found this game quite dull. But then I watched it on Sunday morning where I am. But a win is a win and taking this decent patch of results (Watford notwithstanding) into the much-maligned and feared month of November is the best thing we could possibly do. Fingers crossed we fuck up Sp*rs.
I’ve just watched the full game again on ArsenalPlayer and although there were long stretches of the game where we looked a yard slow and short on ideas, the welsh lot never looked like the better team.
A win against one of our bogey teams and with one of the worst ref (pawson), so overall a good weekend for us.