Brighton Away, My Views

Good Morning to all from a bloody cold, windy, and wet County Cork.

Saturday I woke up with that 'oh shit' feeling. Although I was confident of a win that that little seed of "Oh Shit" was on my mind, and I think if you are honest with yourself you did too. Going to Brighton was not going to be a easy challenge. They're playing well in the Championship and beat France in the last round was a nice little warning. Arsene did what I thought he would by resting many players who have over the past few weeks put in good shifts when on the pitch.

It was a rather scrappy first ten minutes, with Brighton doing all the running and having the first few chances. Once again we didn't get out of first gear quick enough and it showed.

We took the lead against the run of play with quite a sweet finish from Giroud. This boy is really starting to impress me. He has started to score goals and his confidence is sky high, and of course as a striker your confidence needs to be. His left foot finish was quite brilliant, hitting the ball straight into the top corner leaving the Brighton keeper no chance. So you would have thought that this goal was going to lead the way to comfortable victory, hmmm how wrong was we. Brighton exposed our left side, Andre Santos in my opinion is not a Premier League defender and its simply not good enough to be playing for us. If Gibbs gets another long injury then can this man really fill his boots for the time needed? I think not. The goal came from a set play, surprise surprise I hear you shout, zonal marking again cost us and rush of blood to the head from Sczczeny and it was one a piece. Now the "Oh Shit" feeling is well and truly back the head. But we kept going, we showed a lot of determination and went about the job in hand. Giroud once again scores a goal of world class quality to put us back into the lead. A quite magnificent finish from him the control and the speed to finish it like he did was beautiful. I expect him to go on from this game and really push on now, he is quickly becoming a fan favourite which will only help him even more. Zonal marking again comes at fault for the Brighton goal, a ball comes in from the right the Brighton striker was in yards of space to head it home would would be the easiest goal he will get this year.

So then the changes came, Wilshere and Walcott came on and straight away you could see with the pace from Walcott and the drive of Jack a winner coming. It arrived in the 83rd minute with Walcott reacting to a clearance that he knocked back into the box which took a deflection and looped into the net. Yes quite lucky but they all count and we set up a 5th Round home tie with Blackburn Rovers.

After game Arsene said that he was impressed with the determination shown by his players to get the result. I have to agree, although sometimes things just didnt want to happen for us, The boys stuck to the task and got the job the done. In recent weeks I feel that there has been a lack of that. They played as a team and played for each other which is great to see.

Next up Liverpool, its hard to say what wounds they will have coming down to the Emirates, but after watching them against Oldham if the boys stick to playing football and doing what they have shown against France and West Ham, I would be confident of picking up the points for this one.

So I'm off to light the fire and drink too much tea for the day. I'll be covering the match against Liverpool in the next post. Thanks for reading and have a great day.

Sing For The Arsenal
Scotty Boy

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