Arsenal vs Blackburn Rovers - Emirates Stadium, London - Saturday 17th February 2007

This was an absolutely shocking football match. Occasionally you get 0-0 draws of course - some are boring, some are more exciting than the final score suggests. This was horrendously boring - pretty much nothing of any interest at all happened for the entire 90 minutes. There have been some dull displays at the Emirates Stadium so far, where Arsenal have struggled to break down defensive opposition, and this was perhaps the best example yet of this annoying new phenomenon.

Blackburn approached the game with a very clear plan, to keep things tight as can be, try to get a 0-0 draw, then take the game to a replay at their place. Accordingly, they barely ventured over the halfway line to try any attacking whatsoever, and concentrated instead on trying to nullify all Arsenal attempts at goal.

The first half was just utterly dull, the second half mixed dullness with frustration, as Arsenal created a few chances, but just could not get past Brad Friedel in the Blackburn goal. 120 minutes in midweek at Bolton surely didn't help Arsenal to be full of energy, but as much as Blackburn killed the game by being so defensive, Arsenal weren't exactly sparkling either.

Possibly the only incident of note during the entire game was on around 70 minutes, when the referee denied what looked like a nailed on penalty, when Aliadiere was fouled in the box. After missing 2 penalties at Bolton in midweek though, I'm not sure even getting that decision would have made the difference.

One vaguely interesting thing about this game - apart from being the first domestic game where Arsenal have failed to score (a fact that Mark Hughes was idiotically proud of at the end). In the week that Arsenal have quietly admitted lying about their attendance figures (the crowd numbers given are actually the number of tickets sold, not the number of people in the stadium), today's attendance was given as 56,000. With a half-empty away end, and swathes of empty seats in the upper tier behind the goal, it can't have been more than 52,000 in reality.

I'm sure that, with only just over 48 hours notice that this game was even happening, many of our "new" season ticket holders may have been totally unaware that the game was going on. Lucky them, because it was absolutely nothing to get out of bed for on a Saturday morning, let alone anything to write home about.