There is no point me pretending I’m not over the moon with that win, I am.
I couldn’t give a flying that it is a friendly because there was nothing friendly about it.
They were trying to win just as much as Arsenal were. The tell tail signs were there early on when Santi had his Achilles raked. A dive in the box from Ivanović, further evidence that there was no charity involved in this encounter.
I make no apologies for thinking Chelsea are our fiercest rivals. I detest everything about the club, especially that horrible hypocrite of a manager. I love the fact that we beat them, I love it.
There is even less point me trying to review the game. All I know is we won, we were the better team and we deserved to win.
Three things that stood out the most were how much of a difference Giroud seemed to make, how good Coquelin was and Laurent Koscielny is as world class as it’s possible to be.
I am not going to predict we win the league, but I will say that there will have to be some very bad luck, on the injury front, to stop us making a genuine challenge.
So that’s it, my comprehensive match report. I hope you all enjoyed it.
Positively Arsenal 
Bennacer confirms he has signed a five year contract with Arsenal
http://www.getfootballnewsfrance.com/2015/ismael-bennacer-wenger-told-me-i-had-the-potential-to-succeed-at-arsenal/?
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A good time to b a gooner.
Thx George for not towing the line of “it’s just a friendly match”. We all know it’s never gonna be and I’m just happy we won.
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I have always been of the mind that it is simply a high pressure pre season friendly until I read this tweet
Steve Gooner @Merse10
Can only compete for Community Shield by winning FA Cup or the league. Makes it harder to win than league cup
And the truth of Steve Gooner’s assertion is so self evident that I cannot argue.
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I can’t believe I put all that work into doing such an in depth match report and no one is discussing the salient points.
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thoroughly enjoyed your match report.
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was Wenger’s quote
“There’s nothing special there.”
a calculated dig at Mourinho
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Well put George. It is going to be an interesting season. And some enjoyable football.
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Just a brief word on this stuff today about Hazard and Fabregas “not turning up”.
What a load of bollocks. They were there but Bellerin had Hazard’s number the whole game and Ramsey, Coquelin and Santi ruled the midfield. As for Ramires, we can see what his role is from that late “tackle” on Santi. Skill overcame violence.
On yesterday’s evidence, it’s not a question of whether Arsenal can challenge for the PL title, it’s more one of, can Chelsea? Costa’s hamstrings are going to be giving him problems again all season and they don’t have anyone else good enough. Benzema to Chelsea anyone?
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PG
Sounds good to me and I don’t give a f**k that the air conditioning unit has ceased to function as I write!
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A well contested cup with little friendly about it. We were obdurate against a determined Chelsea side hell-bent on not gifting their main opponents for this year’s premiership title any advantage. But we nullified every one of the Chelsea players in a solid and committed display in which everyone without exception played their part on a very hot and testing August Wembley pitch.
If I had any ‘criticisms’ of the team it was the tendency to give away too much possession but even this was symptomatic of Chelsea’s desire to get back into the game rather than anything too lax on our part and in any case, our opponents were guilty of the same – it was, quite simply, a well contested match.
The only real surprise was that we didn’t score more, we certainly carved them open on a regular basis. They had chances, too, but our defence looked as solid as anytime since Tony Adam’s days at the back and this is possibly the greatest indicator of our likely success in the coming season.
Sure, our midfield and attack occupies the bulk of our conversational attention but as we all know, if your defence is the meanest in town then it’s not necessarily a requirement that you outscore the rest of the division. So the defence excites me as much as our attacking prowess and this alone is the greatest portent taken from pre-season, just how ready we appear for the long fight ahead.
I was fortunate to be at Wembley yesterday and have managed to get along to all six of our recent Wembley appearances. I am now happily conditioned to seeing Arsenal win against a range of opponents and to win against the Champions was as pleasing as it gets. Certainly the Chelsea end did not seem a terribly happy place and whilst they did well to hang on to win the division in May, I am convinced this time around, injuries permitting, we will look back at the Community Shield as our own launchpad for the season and the first crack in Chelsea’s patchy veneer of success.
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Short and Sweet, PG.
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It was very evenhanded of Taylor to give Chelsea a free first 10 minutes to kick the shit out of Arsenal’s players while he just looked the other way.
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Three trophies in 3 weeks…may it be six in 9 months….AND at last the pantomime villain gets stuffed.
Doubtless the PV will moan-inho that we parked the bus but do we care that we beat them using their tactics? Oh watch the tears of sympathy run down my cheeks. Actually I’m not at all sure that we deliberately went out to park the bus. It was more of a case I thought that we’d lost confidence in our belief that we play better football. For sure the amount of ball we gave away as opposed to the slick one touch was not featured in my hoped for story book.
But the old adage, play not so well and win is the sign of a good team…and it was a team performance today albeit that Chel$ki had far too much of the ball and spurned a few easy chances. Mind you, spurning easy chances wasn’t just their prerogative, we missed two of the easiest later on which would have given the win far more pomp and circumstance.
But the goal that won the game for us was one that deserves to win any game. Pure delight from the OX. He’d already shown in the first minute that he was up for the game and it was a great pity that he didn’t see a lot more of the ball. So much for my thinking that he’d be the one on the bench.
Personally I thought he would have been MOM but for ball starvation but the performance of Kos was just outstanding. He was closely followed by Natch and Le Coq who both very solid, aided and abetted by Petr who had most things covered.
Not many of our passes reached their destinations. Yes there were some lovely flashes of skill but overall a “1-0 to the Arsenal” can ring out clear from the Grove to Adelaide to Stockholm and Singapore.
The PV btw got his come-uppance when like the two faced twat that he is, he stood to congratulate our players. The old fox that is AW carefully manoeuvred a gap between himself and a player to leave Moaning Jo grasping thin air. Well done Arsene.
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It was an uber-efficient victory.
Not too different to the özil & Ramsey inspired sequence of 2-0 victories two years ago, or the many 2-1 results last season.
Take a lead etc. etc. etc.
Save this time the Arsenal treated Gazprom like they were Stoke.
Would’ve been aittle tougher if they weren’t playing at a neutral ground, if Jose had the footballs required to start his best eleven, but he doesn’t.
What a day for the AAA Ringleaders who have shown more support for the current Gazprom manager, Mendez’s special manager then the Arsenal manager this past decade.
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Still haven’t seen it as player won’t put it up until mdt tonight, fortunately that will be 7 where I am so should see it soon.
I think we all know its importance just as the wins over both manc clubs were last season.
We have now proved we can beat anyone, turn that into consistaincy and we can beat everyone.
Make no mistake the other clubs will have seen our pre-season and are probably writing cheque s as we speak. However the time ahead looks an extremely exciting prospect.
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Taylor is such a lame and palpable bungler, he couldn’t fool a blind badger that had burrowed its way a mile beneath pitch to get away from the awful smell whilst he attempts to tilt
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…. “things that stood out the most were how much of a difference Giroud seemed to make, how good Coquelin is….”
I hope we as fans don’t take this as George bigging up one and dissing the other. Already I see petty disputes cropping up about who starts and in what position.
As we struggled to maintain possession of the ball during Chelsea’s 2nd-half onslaught I think Giroud was vital in us eventually getting a better hold of the ball and launching some counter attacks. I wasn’t so sure that the midfielders were composed enough in retaining the ball. The boss will have to give this some focus and we as fans need to be more flexible in our thinking and less fixated with the favored position of our favorite player.
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Shotta – I think those ‘petty disputes’ will shadow us throughout the season but only because we have so much strength in depth that most combinations will trouble most opponents. Any further buying this window will only add to AW’s dilemmas
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Ah Shotta, you’re talking to me, aren’t you? I’ve gotten that lecture a lot in the last couple of days. Not a big fan of being lectured. I will always root for my favorite. And for the team. I can manage to do both. I think I’m done with discussions regarding lineups and who should play. I will always want Aaron to play. Others will always want their favorite (or favorite right now) to play. It’s not necessary for me to convince someone else of my position in order to hold it. Sometimes I think we were nicer to each other when the team was struggling…we don’t handle competition for places as well as the players do.
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Mmmm.It could equally have been me he was talking to Kelly. Should I be annoyed.?
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Off topic,but not..
The other day I mentioned a slow-mo .gif re opponents trying to injure our players. Here’s one. Abou Adelaide. Watch the very last frames:
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Of,course, Ramires is only ever on the pitch to ruin our player’s limbs, as you see time and time again. Yesterday was no different. If they hadn’t been down a goal at half time, they’d have brought on Obi to smash his way thru our collective ankles.
Did one of them kick Özil in the nuts, which was ignored by “ref” Taylor, after which he gave a foul against Arsenal for a Fab dive?
I’ll have to rewatch the whole game to see the extent of the typical tilting therein.
Love the way the commentators justify the oppositions every cheating scumbag shenanigan-erry.
Even Keown described Wenger’s non handshake as “spoiling the match”. That was followed by the presenter shaking the hand of one presenter but not the hand of Keown – making some point?
Sorry to moan, but the very choosing of Taylor as ref ‘shows intent’, don’t you think?
It was he who was 4th ref at der brige in March 2014, and told Marriner to send off Gibbs.
It’s hardly surprising that Arsenal slow,down their attacking, given the licks they’ll take, unacknowledged, from gazprom. That all goes to show how amazingly well our men played. Putting up with constant intimidation whilst getting zero protection.
“Nothing special there” works on so many levels.
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Nah, George, you were smart enough not to get into a silly debate on Twitter about who should play where. I’ll be taking your more Zen like approach from now on. Andrew is right anyway…whatever team is put out there, wherever they play, is capable of destroying opponents. Best to just enjoy it and keep opinions to myself from now on.
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Alabama @ 12:22pm – It is not just you to be fair. That twitter interaction we had Saturday-Sunday had over 70 posts with all kinds of diverse people involved. That was friendly compared to the sometimes vicious disputes in 07-08, our last serious title run, over whether Adebayor or Bendtner should be our primary central striker or the merits of Almunia vs Lehman. The furor over Eduardo having his legs busted in pieces make people among the many of the reasons we lost the title was the ill-will inside the squad as well as outside amongst the fans. We want to win the the title and sacrifices have to be made by every player especially when it comes to their preferred position.
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I hate it when any of our attacking 5 play in particular positions because it always seems to me we play best when they are playing all over the place. Although the ref was a total disgrace to allow what he allowed he could easily have blown a Chelsea penalty for Per on Fabregas so for small mercies we must be thankful.
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@Shotta – this is me keeping my mouth shut in the name of blog harmony. I hope you appreciate the effort it’s taking…never known for keeping my mouth shut. (Banned smiley).
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Cazorla played at CM and AM yesterday and enjoyed both roles.
For the goal: Ramsey made a CFish darting run from the centre out to the left, Ozil was cutting in from the left (i think) and found Walcott momentarily in Ozil’s tennish area after having given Ivanovic The Diver a scare on the left moments earlier and finally Chambo who apparently had started the game on the other side cut in from the right to expose the tactical genius Mourinho’s ongoing genius in playing a righty at LB.
There will be rotations. Injuries. The midfielders and forward players will move about all over the place. I wouldn’t worry about it all.
When the players are being vocal about the spirit in the camp as they have been it appears to indicate the squad understand the above and are up for the competition and the challenge. In his post-game interview, seconds after the whistle Walcott only referred to himself as an option at CF and expects to play across the front three. The challenge will be for him to make sure he does his job in the different roles, when he plays, but he appears to be ‘ up for it’. The others too.
This has always been The Plan.
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it was a funny kind of bus Arsenal parked yesterday, for example the chance late in the first half where ox crossed for monreal to try and head in, bellerin was the one who gave the ball to ox just outside the area and HB continued his run into the area, so our bus seen both fullbacks in the cfc area at the same time. This bus too created by far the most chances and by far the most shots on goal.
as for that clown taylor, he is the worst ref on the bpl list. Ivanovic, cesc and hazard screamed with every dive as if they had a leg amputated, and taylor obliged with the free kick, and its not even worth while talking about the licence given to cfc to kick afc players all game long.
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Never a pelanty, in spite of the cheeky suggestion by the plundits. If we should be grateful for this one then we should be thankful for the non-call on the later Falcao dive against Monreal (ok that was another 50/50 type collision) and for spotting the definite dive by Ivan The Diver (no yellow) etc.
I don’t want to be grateful for an official not making a horrible error.
The call by Deano against Kompany last January was different. Kompany clearly played the man and not the ball, wasn’t really any doubt just a question of whether the official had a decent enough view in order to allow him to make the call. And conveniently enough since Deano retired from being a FUFA ref he appears to have transformed from Gollum into Smeagol.
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The angle was against Taylor making a pen call yest.
But if he wanted to reward the F Word for dangling his leg out he could’ve but as above I can’t be grateful for that.
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What a brilliant start to the season!
For me the season our campaign has kick-started and in what style! Anybody who says it was not a richly deserved victory is simply not aware of the kind of football the hooligans (read chelsea f.c.) like to play.
We beat them fair and square. Yes it is just the community shield but the shift in our confidence was clear for everyone to see. Arsene always says it right, the fact that our team is super confident and super fit (for a change) to begin the season is worth a lot more than some meaningless signings ..I do believe we are always for the Ozils and Sanchezes though.
It is plain for the world to see what Arsene has built..I don’t think Arsenal needs trophies to acknowledge his genius, however logic dictates with the level of cohesion, confidence, leadership and support this club has a very good chance of winning big in the recent future. Even the blind will see light that day!
Ozil, Coq (the celebration wow!), Cazorla and defence all played well. Walcott is (has been) playing with a kind of “ease” which he never had for a long time.
Forever Arsenal.
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A bigger bus has come along
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