Sign of the times - Arsenal Report

Forget the Bolton and Newcastle games, forget 4-5-1 and put aside Roy Keane’s damning comments this week about the players. There’s no denying this has been a great season for the club. Everything that the players and management set out to do at the start of the season has been achieved and despite many mistakes being made along the way (which hopefully will be learnt from) it’s all ended ok. A month ago this could have been a really hard game if we needed to get something from it; as it turned out it was played like a bit of a friendly. Despite the rhetoric given by players and managers, these end of season games, when neither side has anything to play for, are pretty dull and eventless. Today was no different. There was some ok football played at times but you got the feeling it was 2 sides that didn’t want to get beat heavily and just wanted the season over.

Back on the subject of 4-5-1 for a moment, Keane decided to go with it again, obviously hoping to stifle Arsenal’s free flowing midfield but we suffered the same usual problems with it in that Jones had little support and nothing to feed off. It was a strange decision to go with it and seemed to me as if Keane just didn’t want to go out being beat by several goals which would have left a sour taste in the mouth so played it tight in the hope of getting away with it. Which he kind of did, but we still lost. Hopefully next season with the players we’ll get in the close season we might not have to play so defensively so often and if we do that we get the wide men forward more often.

There weren’t massive changes after last weeks poor show at Bolton but Miller, Chopra, Richardson and Higginbotham were all binned, Evans making a more than welcome return along with Yorke and Ross Wallace getting a start after a long lay-off. Fulop came in for a game in goal too. Arsenal have a few key players missing but put out as strong as side as they could, even with the reserves in though they’re still a talented team.

Straight from the kick-off Edwards had a good chance but his shot from outside the box was blocked by the keeper. After that the game settled into a fairly predictable slow paced pattern. Arsenal did their usual ‘everyone wants to kill us’ act when Eboue went down like he’d been snapped in half after an innocuous tackle by Danny Collins. After a delay and 2 stretchers coming out for him, he got up and wandered back on the field, no worse for wear – Wenger forced to tear up his post match whinge early. Arsenal got their goal a bit out of nothing really, a defence splitting ball from Gilberto fell straight in the path of Theo Walcott who slid it past Fulop.

Sunderland had a fair bit of possession but a lot of it was just between the back four and not much threatened the Arsenal goal. Right on half time though Kenwyne Jones blocked a shot with his midriff which seemed to wind him and force him off. It must have been quite bad as he didn’t return for the second half and O’Donovan took his place. However the system didn’t change and O’Donovan was left pretty much helpless up front. It wasn’t until the last 15 minutes that Chopra came on and we went 2 up front and had our best period of the game. O’Donovan had 2 decent chances though, one was a reaction shot after a cross I don’t think he expected to get and hit it straight at the keeper and a shot from the edge of the box went well wide.

By now the kids in crowd were getting a little bored and distracted and we had the customary Mexican wave and a conga which was quickly stopped by the stewards. As bland as the game was it was good not to have something riding on the last day for a change and the nerves weren’t there.

Arsenals best chance in the second half came when they were awarded an indirect free-kick 6 yards out after the referee said Whitehead's back-pass was deliberate (it was difficult to tell for me). They blasted it well wide though. Arsenal did have the ball in the net again from young sub Mark Randall but it was ruled off-side. Other than that they didn’t get much change out of Nosworthy and the again, impressive Jonny Evans. We had our customary late charge and O’Donovan had another good chance but again the keeper saved it.

Another defeat but a much easier one to take than last weeks. Yes, Arsenal had several key players out but the gulf in class wasn’t that big. Had Arsenal needed to win however we may have seen them play differently.

So the work begins now for Keane and the board. These players are good enough for the Premier League – just, so we won’t see massive outgoings and most of them will be part of the squad that starts next season. But improvement in a few key areas could give us those 15 points to be competing with the teams above.

Report by marcopaul