Match Report: Arsenal 1-1 Liverpool
|Anything but a win was required for Arsenal to stay within touching distance of Premier League leaders Liverpool at a chilly Christmas-esque Emirates.
Rafa Benitez was unable to attend the game in north London due to kidney stones, but it didn’t stop the Reds from challenging for the three points.
French midfielder Samir Nasri was welcomed back into the team for Arsenal after injury, while former Spurs forward Robbie Keane had another chance to show why his price tag is so high with another start upfront.
Arsenal Starting XI
Almunia
Sagna – Gallas – Djourou – Clichy
Denilson – Fabregas (c) – Song – Nasri
Adebayor – Van Persie
Liverpool Starting XI
Reina
Arbeloa – Carragher – Agger – Insua
Kuyt – Lucas – Gerrard (c) – Alonso – Riera
Keane
First Half
The Reds had the first real chance of the game when in the 10th minute, Keane escaped the Gunners off-side trap and collected a long ball from Daniel Agger. The former Tottenham Hotspur forward set up skipper Steven Gerrard, who however, drove straight at goalkeeper Manuel Almunia.
In the 14th minute, Liverpool keeper Pepe Reina had to make a low save off Adebayor’s flicked-on header after the Togo striker made a diagonal run towards the right side of the area to meet a cross from Bacary Sagna.
The home side went ahead in the 24th minute when Van Persie scored with a superb finish. The Dutch international forward met a long diagonal ball from Samir Nasri with his chest and took a first touch taking the ball away from Jamie Carragher, stretched past the Reds defender to power his strike into the back of the net.
Goal: Robin van Persie (24) – Arsenal 1-0 Liverpool
Liverpool, who had made a confident start, came under pressure after the goal as the home side had their tail up also defending fairly well. But the north Londoners were caught out in the 41st minute.
With a direct piece of football, the Reds came up with the equaliser when Keane scored with a fantastic volley after being set up by a long ball from Alvaro Arbeloa.
Goal: Robbie Keane (41) – Arsenal 1-1 Liverpool
The Reds had a golden opportunity to make it 2-1 two minutes later as Dirk Kuyt sent in a cross into the six yard box, but Gerrard despite making all his effort to meet the ball, could only slice it wide of the target with only Almunia to beat.
Arsenal skipper Cesc Fabregas suffered a knock on his knee and had to be helped off the pitch at half time interval. He was replaced by Abou Diaby at the start of the second period.
Second Half
Almunia had to make a sharp save with Lucas testing the Gunners keeper to his right early in the second half.
Arsenal were reduced down to 10 men just past the hour mark as referee Howard Webb showed the red card to Adebayor following a dubious-looking challenge on Arbeloa. The striker was booked in the first half for a foul on Emiliano Insua.
The home side continued to attack with Denilson almost immediately threatening Reina, but the midfielder’s shot from a tight angle was wide of the far post.
The proceedings took a ragged form after the sending off with Webb going on a spate of bookings with Van Persie, Sagna and Carragher getting into the book for reckless challenges.
The Gunners defended resolutely even as the Reds with their man advantage failed to muster clear-cut chances.
Reds’ passing did not seem to work as they went in search of the late winner, and Denmark international Agger moved up to try his luck with a long range shot that only just missed the top corner with five minutes left. Substitute Nabil El Zhar’s glancing header failed to find the target as the clock ticked into the injury time.
Gooner Talk’s Man of the Match: Samir Nasri – After coming back into the side after injury, Nasri provided a wonderful assist for van Persie to make it 1-0. Some superb footwork, neat passing and endless attacking followed from Arsenal’s French maestro – he’ll be needed for the coming games against Villa and Pompey.
disgraceful decision for the Ade red card, did not even touch him with his feet.
Poor goal to concede as well.
I hate making excuses but Howard Webb had a fucking shit game.
Van persie played a blinder, Denilson and even Song were impressive. Fabregas is a huge blow. Even if we had won the season would be effectively over. Maybe Wenger will have to open his cob-webbed wallet in January. Arshavin has been linked but realistically i cant see it happening.
Overall a resilient performance, especially the sencond half!
Any thoughts ?
aahhhh webb you wanker, your not fit to referee. anyway onto more important issues, now that ade is out against villa and fabregas for months it seems then we are going to be even shorter 🙁
wenger you seriously HAVE to spend, we cannot continue with a midfield of song, denilson and diaby for the next 2 months, even tho the former 2 were alright today..i say put nasri and song in the middle with wilshere and maybe diaby/ramsey out wide against villa.
I agree we had a decent game…a lot to be hopeful about. But it seems that the FA want Liverpool to take the league this season, so we have to be twice as good to come out on top. We can do it…and it certainly would help if Arshavin was on our side! COME ON YOU GUNNER’S!!!
i don’t think the who wrote this saw the gane fully
“Arsenal were reduced down to 10 men just past the hour mark as referee Howard Webb showed the red card to Adebayor following a HORRIBLE(REALLY) challenge on Arbeloa.”
We need to start to redefine what a foul really is.
Credit to Ade for not giving him the Wayne Rooney appoach of abuse
fun game to watch and very exciting, does anyone know the status on fabregas?
Howard Webb ruined this game – for Arsenal. Only in this leauge are referee’s of such poor quality aloud to officiate the top games. He has proved yet again that not only is he very poor at his job, that he is a very weak little man.
A draw is not a bad result considering the circumstances.Howard webb was pathetic.We weren’t helped by fabregas’s injury either.I was really impressed by densilson and songs’ work rate.Wish they tried this hard every time they played.Diaby kept losing the ball.Van persie and nasri were world class especially van persie.Kept getting the better of carragher and agger.
Fabregas: Medial knee ligaments. Looked bad but hopefully not too much.
Doesn’t look good for Fabregas. He obviously tweaked something in his knee, the Sky commentator feels he could be out for a while.
howard webb always did it when ever he being a referee for Arsenal games…
Overall the game was OK considering that we played 10 men till the end.denilson & song really impress. diaby have to work more with the ball…
so unlucky to concede the goal, almunia should hv saved it. also unlucky that we lost cecs & ade next few matches.
hmmmmmm, how come our players looked like they wanted to be out there when down to ten men, every 1 battling hard, before hand it was just another average performance.
Doesn’t it just say everything about the state of our football that Howard Webb is considered the best referee in th country? Apart from being generally anti-Arsenal, he just completely f*cked up so many simple decisions today like the foul preceding Sagna’s booking.
Denilson was awesome today
hes not too far from fabregas IMO, just needs a better final ball, and to play better in the smaller matches
Song was good too and diaby was ok
Terrible news about fabregas
Im sick of this shit tho. This is 4 matches in a row vs liverpool! and gerrard and alonso walk off all smug like theyr the best team in the world or somthing
we were just getting into our stride as well, u could see it was gna be a good period for us because just after ade got s/o we were still taking the piss for 10mins with 10 men!
terrible refereeing, just hope the red card will be overturned so we wont have to endure bender
Davi, im afraid that you cannot contest 2 yellows cards, it can only be a straight red, as far as i know..(even if we could contest it i doubt the twats would overturn it anyway)
ref cost us a possible 3 points, he got scared after arca tackle yesterday, no comprison really to ade’s. Once again we drop points, great being an Arsenal fan, our expectations going to decrease more and more as season goes on
papers linking us with 20 million for Arshavan hes never worth that
“Anything but a win was required for Arsenal to stay within touching distance of Premier League leaders Liverpool at a chilly Christmas-esque Emirates.”
Might wanna rephrase that.
Wenger said Fabregas is only out for 1-3 weeks, so good news there, although he’ll definitely miss the Villa game.
What an asset Nasri is to the team hope hell stay fit cuz we’ll need him.
So were without Ade and Fab for the villa game.I think we’ll be fine if we put Diaby just behind RVP but if Wenger goes and brings Bendtner in we’ll lose…period
another thing that bugged me today, Its An Arsenal game and sky fills it studio with two tottenham boys, pathetic.
The lads played a cracking game. Well done to them all. Was really impressed with their attitude today. We were the victim of more shit refereeing. And more skank ass Liverpool diving. Thought we did quite well with 10 men considering. Would have had a great chance at winning with the full 11.
Hope Fabs ain’t out for too long. As much as i appreciate the job Martin O’Neill’s done with Villa this season, we deserve to get the three points on Boxing Day after all the bad luck today. Webbs and Styles should be fucking shot. They’re appalling ref’s.
Well done the Gunners!
those bin-dippers considered lucky, so lucky to have an idiot as a ref. that moron webbs should be damn in an awry crash on his way home!
zeffregas= retard
a good game and fair result, although if el zhar had scored at the end i would be alot happier. and imo, adebayour deserved a sending off. the first one he put a foot into insuas ankle, and the second, imo you NEVER raise you foot that high ‘protecting’ the ball or not. if arbeloa had been coming in faster it would have been another set of stubs into his shins and i think ade knew that.
so glad dossenna wasnt on, insua did great, and el zhar is getting more and more useful. lucas was good as well.
thats 4 draws in 5 between us. not much seperating us is there?