Arsenal conquer the Bridge

Chelsea 3-5 Arsenal


Arsenal left Stamford Bridge with all three points after a truly fantastic game which will live long in the memory of every Arsenal fan as hat-trick hero Robin Van Persie stole the show. The gunners came into this game on the back of a run of six wins in seven games, but started rather nervously against a Chelsea team which boasted the return of £50 million man Fernando Torres. Andre Santos in particular did not look comfortable at left back as Chelsea looked to attack the Brazilian time and time again, going past him with consummate ease. The problem with Santos is that he seems too eager to win the ball back and dives into tackles rather than waiting patiently for an opportunity to regain possession. Consequently when he doesn’t win the ball, the opposition player goes past him and Santos cannot possibly recover as he has taken himself out of the game.

It was one such incident which resulted in Chelsea taking the lead, as Juan Mata evaded Santos’ tackle far too easily and crossed for Frank Lampard to head home. Arsenal understandably felt hard done by as they should have been ahead themselves with both Van Persie and Gervinho earlier failing to hit the target when presented with glorious chances. However this Arsenal team has shown great character to bounce back from their worst start in recent memory and in the 36^th minute were back on terms as the previously anonymous Ramsey slid Gervinho through on goal with a sumptuous pass and the Ivory Coast international showed great composure to cut the ball back to Van Persie to fire into an empty net.

On the stroke of half time Arsenal fell behind again following some horrendous defending from a corner kick. Per Mertesacker was signed to dominate the penalty area with his height, but failed to put any sort of challenge on John Terry, allowing him to run onto Lampard’s delivery and steer the ball into the bottom corner. As Arsenal have inexplicably decided not to have two defenders on the posts when defending from corners, this season, there was no one to clear the ball off the line and Arsenal would go in at half time 2-1 down, ruing missed opportunities and poor defending.  

While other teams may have felt sorry for themselves and let the game slip out of reach, Arsenal began the second half extremely positively and strongly, scoring two goals in six minutes to take the lead for the first time in the match. First, on 49 minutes, Alex Song put Santos through on goal to level the game with a shot that Petr Chech really should have saved, then Theo Walcott picked the ball up on the right and ran at the heart of the Chelsea defence. As he tripped over his own feet the chance seemed to have gone, but Walcott was not to be undone. He picked himself up, switched the ball quickly between both feet to evade three Chelsea defenders and as he bore down on the Chelsea goal, unleashed a powerful shot to beat Chech at his near post to give the gunners the lead.

Arsenal kept Chelsea, especially Torres, quiet until the 80^th minute when Santos played a poor forward pass which was easily intercepted and then played to Mata who unleashed an unstoppable strike to level the match once again. At this point I feared Chelsea would steal all three points and Arsenal would be left to pick up the pieces from another away defeat, however Robin Van Persie had other ideas. Florent Malouda passed the ball back to his defence and as John Terry slipped, Van Persie ran through on goal, rounded Chech and slid the ball home to send the Arsenal fans into delirium. The Dutchman then wrapped up the win with a brilliant strike in the 92^nd minute to complete his hat-trick and round off a wonderful day for those in red and white.

This could be the result which really kick starts our season. Many had looked at the recent run of improved results with a hint of scepticism as most of the games had been played at the Emirates against so called lesser teams. After today’s wonderful performance no one can doubt that Arsenal are well and truly back.