In truth, the Canaries looked every bit the bottom side they are--incompetent going forward, ineffectual on defense. But the ball still has to be deposited behind the keeper into the net, and the Gunners did it early and often today. The goals were all quite nice, perhaps the pick of the bunch being Tierney's pinpoint hard shot past the keeper, at a tight angle and at distance, that bounced in off the far post; Odegaard's assist was perfect. Saka scored two, Lacazette scored on a penalty, and no Arsenal game would be complete without Emile Smith Rowe coming off the bench to put one in. He's on fire. Martinelli also had a dynamite game. It will be difficult to keep up this intensity. The youth of so many of our best players will help, also that we have no European distractions. The minimum goal has to be 6th place and Europa League, which won't be easy. Fourth is not out of the question; we're there now. Spuds and Man U are on our heels and playing well under new managers, though.
West Ham lost to Southampton 2-3 and Leicester lost to City 6-3, putting those teams further back of us, but Tottenham punked ten man Palace 3-0 to stay close enough to catch or pass us by doing well in their three games in hand. All we can do is win the games we play, and we're doing that. Man City in a week will be a stern test, and I'm looking forward to it. The Wolves game was canceled due to Covid. The semis against Liverpool should also be a good gauge of how far we've progressed. It's all well and good to beat up on the likes of Norwich, and it should be unsurprising. We need to beat the really good teams on our day as well. So far this season, that has not happened. We're a combined 0-12 score against the three teams above us so far this season.
All three of our right backs have Covid, so Ben White was moved out to that position and Rob Holding took his place today. Both did fine.
Zaha got a red card today against Tottenham in a 3-o0 loss,but it was going badly even before then with Palace down 2-0 after 37 minutes. Palace now has only one win in its last seven games. I did not expect this game to even happen since Palace has Covid issues and sought a postponement, which the league denied.
ReplyDeleteI was watching Palace for a while, since Arsenal was not televised. They did not look good at all. Zaha was an idiot. His first yellow was harsh, but the second had to be called. Why would he do that? Palace is dropping in the table and is fortunate that there are at least three really crap EPL teams to ensure they won't be relegated.
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