Firstly, it is great to have proper football back again. I was delighted to be watching Arsenal play this afternoon. 'Wow, look at the slickness of our passing', I mused to myself. 'Look at how not-injured van Persie was by the international break', I muttered. 'Look how solid our defence looks. There's Mertesacker, about to play a simple ball back to Szczesny. He's an experienced international footballer, this simple ball will be so simple', I murmured in the 16th minute. Ah.
It wouldn't be an Arsenal performance without an avoidable defensive blunder that leads to the opponents scoring from their first chance of the game, though, and that aside this was hugely enjoyable for a number of reasons. Rather than simply go through what happened in a game you probably watched yourself, I'm going to give you a handy list of reasons why this game was so enjoyable. Cut it out and put it in your wallet if you want:
1) Three points. Getting the obvious one out of the way first. This was a tricky win against a decent side. Only our second away win of the season, and much more difficult than that first one, this will stop commentators saying 'Arsenal have only won one away game so far this season', as they are liable to do ad nauseum. Three points draws us level with Spurs, who have two games in hand. They would do well to start looking over their shoulders.
2) It was hard-fought. Unlike our most recent league match, against West Brom, which was a walk in the park, this was tough. We weren't exactly under a lot of pressure,in fact, Mertesacker's gift was the only real chance I can remember them having. And, had we taken some more of our chances we could have had the game wrapped up with half an hour gone. But we didn't, so we didn't, and Norwich did not make our comeback easy. Any adversity overcome is going to be good for morale, which seems pretty high at the moment, and good for momentum. As the old adage has it, winning is a habit. A habit which we are, enjoyably, in at the moment.
3) Theo Walcott's performance. Take that Hansen. Theo has had a good season so far, and he was influential today. His assist for van Persie's first was from an excellent piece of work- using his pace to put the ball round Tierney and go the other way, a move he is trying quite a lot at the moment. The thing with Walcott is, even if you 'know' how to play against him, his pace is such that any ball behind the full-back will likely reach him. He still has his detractors but his statistics are becoming increasingly impressive.
4) Robin van Persie's ridiculous record grows even more ridiculous. His stats for the calendar year in the Premier Leagure are now played 29, scored 31. Those are franky silly numbers. I really, really don't want to jinx his run of form so all I'll say for now is that the fact that this man was overlooked for the Ballon d'Or nominations (which are based on calendar year) should be enough to bring down the corrupt, greedy, amoral black hole that is FIFA all on its own.*
5) The ending. With 15 minutes to go, I couldn't watch. So deeply ingrained in today's Arsenal fan is the imminent sense of self-destruction that a one goal-lead with a quarter of an hour to go seems almost worse than chasing the game. Forcing myself to look, I noticed something strange. The players weren't panicking. We didn't win a corner only to see all of our players, including Szczesny, sprinting into their penalty box. We were calm. Commentators call this tactic, of closing out a game by maintaing possession and calmness 'mature', and I suppose that's accurate. We did it well, not really allowing them any possession, except for the free kick in the 91st minute brought about by an outrageous dive. We brought on a substitute to waste time. Szczesny dawdled appropriately. It was good to see.
6) Stoke lost. This one is not relevant to our game per se, but, Stoke lost. Hopefully they'll get relegated.
So, there it is. The emptiness of the last two weeks has lifted, football is back, and Arsenal have won 10 of our last 12 games. Super.
Follow me on Twitter @joeblogsarsenal
*Yes, I know it's voted for by journalists etc., but any excuse.
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