Villa 1 – 0 Arsenal; Shattered, but the lads dug it out.

The post will come later, hopefully.
Immediate thoughts.
Invincibles? More like untouchables, given the amount of frees they were given. How easy do they go down?
I’d suggest it’s nearly as much as Carra does on any of the top 6 clubs. What a tool he is.
Very importantly, they had two penalty shouts and they weren’t given.

Right, it’s okay, I’m back to finish my thoughts.
Generally, after a home game, the SIL, my daughter and the grandsons come round and we discuss the game. (It’s a good excuse for a drink, really) and that’s why I didn’t finish the post last night.
And there is one point that was interesting. My first comment was that I thought the crowd was a bit subdued, probably because of nerves?
He assured me that it was every bit as loud as Wednesday night and an excellent atmosphere. “Just like going back to the eighties” was his actual reply. It surprised me, but it was nice to hear. I much prefer how Amazon set their sound up, but hey ho.

The universal opinion was that the players are obviously shot, both physically and mentally and it’s why I’m putting this victory maybe on a par with the Man City one, albeit for different reasons. If you were to try and convince me that this was actually the better performance, purely because the lads managed to somehow keep going and hold on against the team that were top of the table, you wouldn’t hear any argument from me.

I was asking for fresh legs, as you could see we were struggling with the pace of the game, even though I didn’t think it was quick. But it wasn’t just that; there was a lack of zip to our passing and it was getting us into more trouble, purely because we were constantly giving the ball away at one stage.
Fortunately, the lord Emery was all over it and saw it too. Diaby came on at half time and I suspect it was because Bailey was feeling a bit of an injury, which was perhaps convenient, because he’ll have no reason to complain about being subbed.

Ramsey came on, followed by Cash, Dendoncker and Moreno and I thought it didn’t take long to show the benefits of an injection of fresh legs.

I think it was also fairly obvious that Arsenal looked jaded too. Not as much as our lads and the extra day’s rest had no doubt helped them, but even so, I didn’t think they looked fully on it. The Luton game took a fair bit out of them, I think.
Not that I’m making any excuses for them.

The penalties were correctly not given and that’s an area where I like to think I can always give a fair honest opinion, even if it goes against us. I’m not going to discuss why they weren’t given as it’s irrelevent. Not that Arsenal fans in the comments I’ve read elsewhere agree. To pretty much a man, they think every decision went against them and there’s a massive conspiracy to do the club down.
Er, tin foil hat alert lads! Every club outside the “Big 6” has been thinking the total opposite for decades!
A lot of them also think they were fouled off the park too.
Fortunately, many also agreed with me that they’re just a diving bunch of out and out cheats, in my opinion and it’s disgusting. I read a comment that Jesus said he “felt a touch on the back of my leg”. No doubt he’s using that to justify the fact that he went down and should have been given it.
Listen, my friend. A touch on the leg is not a reason for a foul to be given. Football is still supposed to be a contact sport and it’s this sort of view that is ruining the game. Grow a pair, get up and crack on with the game.
Rant over.

What was also interesting in the dozens of comments that I’ve read, was that many actually thought we were the better side, mostly because of the way we controlled the game and mostly stopped them playing.
It’s an interesting view, but I don’t think I could go that far. Arsenal had a lot more possession and while I’m a big exponent of the “possession means nothing” theory, it did mean I thought they dominated the game and looked the bigger threat, on balance.

Still, possession doesn’t win games. Goals do and ours was excellent.
The ball from Tielemens to Bailey, then his good work in supplying McGinn, who finished with great Dalglish-like aplomb.
Something came out of McGinn’s post match interview which says it all about Emery and his coaching team’s ability, I thought. McGinn said that normally he would have hit that with his right foot, but he’d been told it’s better to turn and hit it with his left, which is what he did.

I think we’re in a very good place now and it’s not just because we’re sat third in the league and two points behind the leaders, not far off the halfway mark.
We’re also equal top in the last 5 games current form table too, with our four wins and a draw only equalled by Liverpool and Bournemouth. As has been mentioned, our draw against them looks a lot better than I thought at the time.

15 games on the trot at home, a new record for the club. We’re just breaking them all the time it seems. I’m sure we broke one for Arsenal last night too, but I can’t think what it was.

Whatever, we can’t afford to dwell and it’s onto the next game (I think Emery’s even rubbing off on me too) which is Mostar on Thursday.
I wouldn’t normally encourage it, but having seen the lads so drained last night, the manager is going to have to seriously change it up.
But that’s for Thursday.

I’m still not at a stage where I fully expect us to win every game, but I’m getting there a little bit more every time.

UTV!