After the slip up against Hull City on Saturday, there was obvious demand amongst Arsenal fans for some kind of reaction. There were calls for the first team to be dropped en masse and the kids brought back in, calls for Gallas to be stripped of the captaincy (probably not a bad idea, given the fact that, were he not captain, he might not even be in the team). And, most ridiculously, there were calls for Wenger to go - which thankfully didn't happen.
When reviewing the Hull game, I said that on another day, Arsenal could have won that game by a few goals. This was that "other day". We created plenty of chances, put a few away, and Porto's few chances didn't happen to amount to anything - despite a couple of spectacular saves from Almunia. The same display yet the opposite outcome to the Hull game. True, Porto were surprisingly uninterested, and looked very surprisingly crap. Maybe they just don't travel well, or maybe they aren't the side they were - probably a bit of both - but it was a surprise how lacklustre they looked. Certainly made things easy for Arsenal.
Van Persie and Adebayor finished the game with 2 goals each - Van Persie's were both fantastic goals in their own way - the first was the all important one to break the deadlock, and his second came after a fantastic piece of skill and shot. Adebayor's goals, however, were less good - a penalty, and a header that can only have been a mishead, but it foxed the defender and went in. Added to the chances that Adebayor missed - there were many, and some were criminally easy - Van Persie had the better game for his 2 goals. Still, nobody was complaining about either at the end.
By the time the game was all but won at 3-0, there was some fun with substitutes. Ours were warming up wearing pink bibs - possibly Arsene Wenger's revenge for Saturday. Porto put on a sub called Hulk, who was introduced to massive cheering from the home crowd - especially as the announcer called him "The Hulk". After that amusement, our subs actually did OK - Bendtner had a great game I thought, and Vela looked pretty lively as well.
All in all, this was another game in a period where Arsenal are seeming to blow hot and cold - and this was one of the "hot" games. We seem to be able to sweep anybody away when things are going well, but equally capable of losing games to teams we really shouldn't lose to. We are top of our Champions League group, which is a decent place to be - but we need to work on the consistency if we are not going to come up too short again. Which means that the international break for 2 weeks coming up, is again most unwelcome. No home game now until 18th October, lets hope we can build on the Porto and Sheffield United games, and forget the Hull game quickly. Tonight certainly helped us do the last of those.
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