On the second day of the New Year, Arsenal were haunted by the same occurrences the plagued them in the previous year. Fulham, who were helped immensely by referee Lee Probert, scored two late goals to stun the Gunners.
The real turning point in the game occurred when Probert decided to award a second yellow card to Johan Djourou. His first booking was probably justified, but the second was far from a foul. Bobby Zamora tumbled to the ground after realising that Szczesny would beat him to the ball, and out came the red card. Oddly, there were no other cards shown all night by Probert.
After we went down to ten men, Fulham started hunting down the equaliser. Ironically, it was Zamora who snatched the points away from Arsene Wenger’s side. The first goal was a result of our typical inability to defend set pieces. Fulham’s winner was an excellent volley by Zamora, though Szczesny maybe should have reacted quicker to the near-post finish. To his credit, Zamora did execute a van Persie-like strike.
Arsene Wenger was fuming at his post-match press conference about various decisions made by the referee:
“The referee influenced the game completely the wrong way in my opinion. We cannot influence that. We had a good first half … in the second half we were more tired and in the last 10 minutes we lost the game because we were down to 10 men. The first yellow card was not a yellow card; the second yellow card was a foul for us. It was also 100% a penalty for us in the first half.
“When Djourou got the first yellow, every time they went down to get him the second yellow. He did nothing at all. I saw it coming because when Frei came on the game was all [about] looking for the second yellow card for Djourou. The referee was naive enough to give it. We played many games recently and we knew that if we dropped our level we would be in trouble. But we would not have been in trouble if we had stayed with 11 on the pitch.” (Source: The Guardian)
Regarding the penalty incident in the first half, Senderos made minimal contact with Gervinho, although he made no contact with the ball. Had it been given, it would have been a soft penalty. That said, referees have simply refused to award penalties to us in recent weeks.
Many writers are now wrongly bashing Arsenal’s defending for the loss at Craven Cottage. Before the red card, the back four were very strong. Laurent Koscielny scored and was terrific at the back. Despite playing out of position, Francis Coquelin was fantastic at left-back. All of the trouble began when Djourou was sent off.
In reality, we should have killed this game in the first half. So many opportunities were wasted early on and we could have easily been up by three at the break. Unfortunately, Walcott was again under-performing, and Gervinho finds it very hard to put the ball in the net. The Ivorian winger can become one of the best wingers in the Premiership if he can only improve his finishing.
Chelsea have jumped back into the top four while we fall on the outskirts once again. My feeling is that the race for the Champions League spots will not finish until near the very end of the season.
Arsenal supporters found out that U2′s famous lyrics are correct: “Nothing changes on New Year’s Day.” Just as our club were seemingly moving on from our terrible 2011, the players and the problems with the team are still the same. Still, there is no reason to overreact to this result because it is very difficult to get a result away from home when your side is down a man.
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