Review: Arsenal 2 - Liverpool 1

As usual, the boys showed some of the first team how it should be done. Got to a lead, and held on to it. It was a great performance, but the only real thing I would take away from the performance was who exactly has a rightful claim to a first team place, and who should in turn fear theirs. Let's see: Senderos should at least be on the bench; Gibbs for sure; Gilbert perhaps; Merida for sure; Ramsey for sure; Fabianski for sure. It was excellent to see Ed out for the full 90 minutes, as it was for Nasri as well. Bent Nick did well, and capped his performance with a solid goal with his left foot.

All in all, nothing too much one could fault from the performance. For once, the goal we let in wasn't soft, and I would gladly give Pool the credit for it, and not some silly team or individual error on our part.

Senderos and Silvestre did reasonably well, though I must admit our best defender for the night must've been Voronin. Any Liverpool threat, and he was sure to snuff it out. Good man. Just what Rafa has in mind when he keeps him paid and on Pool books is for him to sort out.

As for the goals, two things stood out: One, Merida's first goal for the team was a thing of beauty, and more importantly, confidence. Nice slap on the face to Le Boss, saying, put me on the first team. Two, Bent Nick's came at the end of a beautiful period of passing through the entire team. Simply wonderful to behold. We'd missed some of that in recent games. The goals are right here to check out:



I'd said this before, and I won't put too much on this win. It was nice to see, no doubt, but we'll have to see how to translate some of the positives into the games that matter. We can do that either through transferring some of the work rate and attitude, and transferring some of the better performers into the first team.

I'm not going to go into the player ratings. It's been painful enough watching the game through a live stream, and honestly, if the whole team looks to flow on a stream that lags, stops, hangs, etc, then I'm fine with it.

On to Saturday. Defend again like we did today as a team - even Bent Nick was back all the time - and we should do fine.