In the summer of 2016, we went to England to (among other things) watch the Ultimate World Championships. Our daughter represented her adopted country New Zealand (which did well). The games were held on university fields adjacent to the Watford training ground, and the tournament used their facilities. (It was of course next door to Arsenal's training ground, which a uniformed guard forbade me to even take a picture of from the access road, let alone enter.) I started thinking fondly of Watford FC. Now I fucking hate them. Deeney is a grade A asshole, and Richarlison-whatever is such a blatant diver he should be yellow carded on sight.
So it was with great pleasure that I watched their demolition today at the Emirates. Deeney's crap PK, making possible Cech's 200th EPL clean sheet and first AFC saved penalty, was the two-inch thick icing on a very tasty cake. I didn't even mind the bad call that awarded them the penalty after seeing that block. I HATE it when players (Jack does it all the time) just knock the ball past a player and run into him to get a free kick, and it's even worse in the box. Compounding that Atkinson error was the failure to award Mkhitaryan a penalty for getting absolutely wiped out with a slide tackle a couple minutes later. At least he didn't buy Richarlison's dive a few minutes from the end.
Nice goals, right? It has to be said that Watford could have had a couple as well, but they were not good enough to make the most of their opportunities. We made do with our second choice center backs after Mustafi was kicked out of the game (sheesh, could Watford have been any more obvious that their whole game plan was "kick Arsenal"?), and AMN looked very good deputising for Hector. Auba seems quite comfortable now and the two connections he made with Mikhi bode well for the future. I hope we get Lacazette back for Milan but even if we don't the rest that Ramsey, Bellerin, and Kos got should set us up nicely.
I am going to complain about Xhaka again. He was too casual on the ball throughout the game, and the guy just has to jaw at the referee enough to warrant a card. This is idiotic. Most clubs clamp down on this from whiny players, but Wenger could never cure Giroud or Xhaka of this dopey habit. I'd levy severe fines for that sort of nonsense. If Granit put that energy into coming back for the ball insted of waiting for it to get to him as an opposing midfielder nips it off him, he'd be a better player. Mikhi gave the ball away quite a bit too, but at least he committed himself to atone for the error each time.
I would be remiss if I did not utter a hearty virtual Nelson Mundt "Ha Ha!" at the Spuds crashing out to my second favorite team, the bianconeri from Torino. Delightful. Chiellini rubbed it in, too. Tottenham actually outplayed Juve over the 180 minutes, but once again it was "just enough to win" from Szczesny's new team.
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