Comeback Kings Lead The Way By Prince Theo!


Theo Walcott’s Introduction Was Electric…

There was a sense of ‘Deja Vu’ when Hamburg’s Rafael van der Vaart scored the opening goal after only 4 minutes but a clever tactical change from Arsene in the second half over-turned the deficit and Arsenal came out 3-1 winners.

Even though they left it a bit late!

Arsenal were average in the first half, seemingly without any confidence after several poor results at the Emirates this season.

Flamini replaced Gilberto in the holding midfield role, Freddie started his first game after coming back from injury and Senderos replaced Gallas in the middle.

Great credit to Arsenal though after going a goal down – they attacked, attacked and attacked and they got what they deserved 5 minutes after the break.

Cesc played in Van Persie with the perfect pass and the Dutchman comfortably slotted the ball home into the near post with his weaker foot. Was this going to be yet another 1-1 draw at the Emirates?

With Van Persie switching to the right at half-time Arsenal had better of the play and created more opportunities, but it wasn’t until the introduction of the super-sub Theo Walcott with 15 minutes to go when Arsenal looked much more dangerous.

Walcott may have only played 15 minutes but his impact was fantastic.

His sheer pace was frightening and his willingness to run behind the Hamburg defence caused all kinds of problems. He started the first couple of minutes on the left-hand side for the substituted Freddie but once he switched to the right his partnership with Eboue was electric.

Theo’s first major contribution was to slide in Eboue just inside the penalty area. Then the right-back dropped his shoulder, gave a brilliant burst of pace and smashed the ball low under the Hamburg keeper.

Arsenal had finally come back!

It was a superb goal and for some reason reminded me of the winning goal Belletti scored for Barcelona against us in the Champions League Final last season – that goal also made the game 2-1.

Finally Hamburg had to commit men forward, and just before the 90 minutes were up Theo was released down the right wing and played a well-controlled cross to Julio Baptista in the centre to score a cool header and finish the game 3-1.

Is the Emirates curse broken?

Who knows, but Arsenal are scoring goals again!

 

3 thoughts on “Comeback Kings Lead The Way By Prince Theo!

  1. Theo to come on for Hleb. Or move Hleb to left and Theo on right. Hleb is always full of running but tires in the last 20. We can replace him with Walcott. Then we should make sure Baptista is on the field too as Theo can cross a mean ball. Baptista seems to be the only player confident in his heading abilities. Walcott looked for Baptista with his cross last night and the Beast made sure he scored.

     
  2. We need to cut out all these cheap goals we give away at the Emirates. I’m not sure what the problem is but Arsenal don’t seem to be alert in the first 20 minutes of the game and that’s when they concede at home.

    It’s as if Arsenal HAVE to concede the first goal or something!

    Good result last night though – and I’m not bothered Henry is out for the Porto game. For starters it will give him a much needed rest and secondly we seem to play better without him!

     
  3. Play better without him??. The newcastle game was turned around when he came on. We should have payed with him from the start and in a 4-4-2. Same with the Hamburg game. When we went 4-4-2 with VanP on right and Henry on left of a front 2 it stretched out the german back 4. They had 2 strikers to worry about, Henry being the main threat in their eyes allowing VanP the space to sneak in for his goal. Henry plays much better when he as a partner. Saying that though the 4-5-1 does have a part to play but only i feel against teams who like to play footie and where we really need to dominate the possession. This is more suited to europe but works fine against teams like manu and pool. 2 strikers need to be deployed against the likes of bolton, newcastle and boro.

     

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