I really still don’t understand, and its been almost 24 hours since the game began, how we managed to lose that tie. I haven’t got a clue where to begin, but begin I shall.
The match started with only one team in it, with the fantastic atmosphere we can only dream of hearing at the Emirates giving us the impetus it seemed, rather than intimidating the players. This was just as I had thought, and as we ran rings around the far less technical Liverpool players I thought we were in for a fantastic European night for Arsenal. This feeling was strengthened further when Diaby deservedly gave Arsenal the lead, with fantastic one touch build up play leading to Adebayor’s cut back being smothered by Reina, but only as far as Flamini, who expertly controlled and distributed to Fabregas, who passed to Hleb who passsed to Diaby who scored. 1-0 to the Arsenal then, and we didn’t stop there.
Oh no, we started to humiliate our opponents with our sublime range of passing into feet, working the ball wide, working the ball left and creating a couple of decent chances, and with another couple of nearly-chances with the final ball just not appearing. But, just as with Arsenal’s season, as it started to look too good to be true, it was bought crashing down to Earth. Liverpool had a corner swept into the middle to Hyypia, who had somehow outfoxed Senderos to head home completely unmarked, despite Fabregas’ best efforts to block the ball with his head on the line. Flamini then was forced off with an injury, and replaced by Gilberto, making Arsenal seem to have something missing in the midfield, with the mobility of that area of the pitch halved by the Brazilian’s introduction. Liverpool had some possession, and a lot of long balls that were coming back to Liverpool players, but they couldn’t muster a chance between them, and so the half ended all square.
The second period started how the first had ended, plenty of possession for Liverpool with the ball seemingly unable to stick to an Arsenal player for longer than a few seconds at a time. But Liverpool lacked the invention to harm Arsenal and Eboue could and should have made them pay when played into the area by Toure, but for some reason Eboue found himself lacink any footballing intelligence, something which is vital in these situations, and duly shot from an impossible angle rather than cross the ball with reina out of position. Of course, as has been the case in the last month or so, we are inevitably punished for these misses, and when Torres recieved the ball in the area, who then swivelled and shot in to the top corner with barely a hint of movement from either the two Arsenal players with him or the Arsenal keeperit seemed as though we didn’t actually want to stop him from scoring.
But soon we had a chance to equalise. The goal had spurned us on to play better once again, and Adebayor should have scored when a ball towards van Persie ran on into the box to the unmarked Adebayor, who took a hopeful swipe at the ball which, obviously, missed the target hopelessly. But all was not lost (yet) as Walcott had other ideas. Up against the team he supported, he recieved the ball on the edge of his own box, before skipping past one challenge after another, showing lightning pace, before cutting the ball back in the opposite box to which he started the move from, into Adebayor’s path who couldn’t possibly have missed if he had tried. Arsenal should have then closed out the game, Theo Walcott playing on the counter for a killer goal to seal a momentous victory that would have seen the teenager finally hailed for what he is - a potential star of the world game.
But again as with the latter part of this season, nothing ever goes according to plan - within a minute of Theo’s wonderful assist, we were behind again, and there would be no going back this time. Toure was pointlessly jumping around behind Babel when there was a covering Arsenal defender who could have dealt with the situation almost certainly, and Babel, an Arsenal fan, took the decision of falling down. Had this been at the Emirates last week, Babel would have had more chance of a yellow card for diving than a penalty for his fall, but up stepped the referee to deliver the killer blow to Arsenal’s hopes this season.
Gerrard shot and Almunia got absolutely nowhere near a fantastic penalty, and with time running out we were found with all our players in Liverpool’s box bar Fabregas, who was on the right wing just inside his own half, the ball wasplayed through and Babel, despite having a huge advantage over Fabregas in terms of pace, only just managed to get to Almunia to stroke it past him before the young Spaniard arrived to see all Arsenal hopes diminish.
