04 February 2006

Birmingham City vs Arsenal - St Andrews, Birmingham - Saturday 4th February 2006

The fourth day in a row of activity, after 2 gigs and a football match on previous days, and it all started horribly early in the morning, and with a sore head from the night before.

A trip to Birmingham away is never the nicest of jaunts, especially because of the dangers lurking on the walk between ground and station, and the particularly small-time mentality of many of the home supporters - chips on shoulders are all the rage round here, especially when big teams come to visit. Throw in a return train journey at the mercy of Virgin trains, and its a trip that you approach with some trepidation - there's just so much that can go wrong!!

Luckily today, the Virgin trains part was effectively avoided, with a bargain £15 train ticket on a slow train from Marylebone. I'm sure when train companies cotton on that their fares can be useful for travelling football fans, they'll put a quick stop to that - so we expolited the loophole whilst it lasted!!

Inside the ground before the game, expectations were low - with no defenders to speak of, on a bad run of luck, and playing a side that seem to have picked up of late, many were expecting us to get stuffed. Strange then, that when the club as a whole was probably at its lowest ebb for a number of years (with the stories about Sol Campbell dominating the press since the last game), we managed to pull an excellent result out of the blue.

Two pieces of history today, as well as the excellently fought out 2-0 win. Emmanuel Adebayor made his debut for Arsenal, scored the opening goal, and looked pretty solid throughout. Then, in the second half, Thierry Henry scored his 200th goal for the club. We were denied a third piece of history, as Theo Walcott was on the bench, but sadly stayed there. Still, 2 events isn't bad!

Birmingham played badly today, and you can see why they are in the bottom 3, but we could easily have lost this game (and have lost several like it already this season). So, a great result, much needed in more ways than one for Arsenal this week.

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