Watching With the Enemy: the NLD with my Gooner friend

Article by Marc Ashed

Yesterday was the 2nd year in what I hope to be a long tradition of watching the North London Derby with my good friend, Jesse..a Gooner. As this game was at the Emirates, I took the short drive over to the historic Federal Hill district of Baltimore and in March for the reverse fixture, I will be hosting him.

We made sure that there was Bailey's for Irish coffee, plenty of beer for the game and after breakfast, the focus turned to the match. There was a clear understanding between us that for the next 90 minutes, we would be foes.

It started out with an overwhelming start by Arsenal, easily outplaying us for the first 10 minutes. We started to find our footing and started threatening when Giroud scored his quality goal. Michael Dawson had a poor game but no moment proved as costly as when he failed to play the offside trap and instead was 2 steps behind Giroud for the cross. At first, I blamed Danny Rose, but upon watching the replays I noticed that the error lay at Dawson's feet. He gives his heart for the club but isn't top quality and may soon be our 4th choice centre back. Jesse jumped up and fist pumped to celebrate the goal and I could do nothing but sit there and stare at the screen.

The goal spurred us on to attack and maintain possession even further. We were giving the ball away too easily for the first 25 minutes and we had our wake-up call. We knocked the ball around the pitch but outside of Andros Townsend, we recycled possession without testing the Arsenal back line. In my opinion, Townsend torched Gibbs consistently but didn't have many options once he beat him. Soldado worked the channels and put himself in great positions but service was either non-existent or poor. Throughout the whole match, our crosses were met by nobody in the box besides a lonely Soldado. Chadli did very well to take on Jenkinson early but then tended to keep floating in field with less success. I understand in AVB's system, the full backs are designed to bring width but Chadli had most of his success when staying out wide rather than running infield. Halftime could not come soon enough, I was confident that AVB would motivate the troops to take it to another level in the 2nd half.

When the 2nd half play was identical to the 1st, the ranting began. It was extremely frustrating. As the frustration rose, more beer was flowing. Our midfield was powerful and stifling attack after attack but offered nothing going forward. I was calling out for Holtby around the 30th minute to replace Dembele and start injecting positive passes and passion into the squad, but that move never came. I think that Holtby may overtake Dembele in the midfield spot very soon but that's another story for another article. At this point, Jesse was humouring me. Inside, he was thrilled that they were up 1-0 but on the outside, he was agreeing with my rants and inviting me to keep venting. Until the 65th minute, we pushed forward but did not look likely to score. 

The substitutions that I was hoping would make an impact did not come until late and even then, I did not agree with the first of them. Defoe for Dembele made little sense in my opinion since the problem was lack of service, not lack of poaching ability on the pitch. Capoue was forced off after suffering a nasty injury and at the time of writing, he seems to have escaped a serious fracture. Sandro came on and did extremely well but it was a like for like substitution. Lamela looked timid but what could you expect from him? He did some good things and always looked to be a threat but he has trained with the squad once or twice before this game. It was a huge situation for him to be thrown into.

Although I was not thrilled with 2 of the substitutes, we were relentless for the last 25 minutes. Hugo had saved us on several occasions and it seemed as though we were going to get that equaliser. He is probably the top keeper in the PL at the moment and today was an amazing display.

Our comeback was not meant to be, we had a deflected effort nearly draw us level and then Kyle Walker scuffed a shot from about 10 yards. The whole time, I was gushing about the arrival of Christian Eriksen and how he would solve so many of our problems that we faced through the first 3 games including today. We lacked creativity in the centre of the pitch and the game was screaming out for CE10 and Lewis Holtby.

Although I was absolutely gutted about the loss, I still found solace in the fact that our new signings had just met each other in the last month or so. Once Lamela settles, Eriksen starts pulling the strings from the midfield in the final 3rd and our team starts to click, we will not lose games like that. 

As Arsene Wenger and AVB shook hands on screen, Jesse and I shook hands and with that, became friends once again. He can savour this victory until March but the prevailing feeling is that we are on the rise and just need to settle in. We will find our right formula soon and begin to fulfil our massive potential. Even with the loss, all will be okay in N17. Patience is needed but we will be rewarded for it. In AVB we trust.

COME ON YOU SPURS!

@MarcAron22

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