West Bromwich Albion (1) – (1) Arsenal
Wilshere 63’
The Hawthorns, West Bromwich
Barclays Premier League
We all know about the amazing run Arsenal have been on over the last few weeks – 10 consecutive wins in a row and top of the Premier League and top of our Champions League group. Simply stunning form since the opening day defeat to Aston Villa.
Yesterday’s game against West Brom was always going to be a tough test – before the match I was nervous because they were a team full of confidence after beating Manchester United at Old Trafford and they had a newly signed Sessegnon – it’s well known that he can be a world beater in the first 8/9 games for a new club and they he’s completely useless for the rest of the season and following years (Sunderland fans will be able to vouch for that) but unfortunately for us, this was West Brom’s 7th game of the new season.
They also had useful players such as Amalfitano (who is a hell of a find by the way) and a player who can also make a difference.
And so it proved.
Sessegnon and Amalfitano were lively and causing Arsenal all kinds of problems throughout the game. We didn’t play with our usual tempo partly because we had a demanding Champions League game midweek and partly because West Brom were so well organised. They sat deep, prevented us from having any space in the final third and broke on the counter attack with pace.
They opened the scoring after we failed to clear a corner only for Amalfitano to send in a decent cross for Yacob to score a powerful header at the near post. After that, we struggled to get our game going but Jack Wilshere, who has been in the press for all the wrong reasons this week, made up somewhat by driving Arsenal forward and scoring a well taken equaliser.
Overall, you could argue that a point was a fair result. Although Arsenal can count themselves lucky at certain points of the match – Nicolas Anelka had two massive chances to put West Brom two nil up and you would have to say that if they scored a second goal it would have been a step too far for us to get anything from the game.
Olivier Giroud did have a great chance after being put through with a wonderful through ball from Wilshere but he couldn’t get the ball past Myhill.
At the end of the day, we finish the weekend back on top of the Premier League table and are still 2 points ahead of Chelsea, 3 ahead of Manchester City and Tottenham and 6 ahead of Manchester United.
And after 7 games of the Premier League season and after the woeful performance against Aston Villa on the opening day, we would have taken all day long.
Onwards and upwards.