This game was an excellent three points - not the most simple or convincing three points, but a much needed and well won three points all the same. Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester United all winning at the weekend made it all the more important. Everton went ahead in the first half, taking advantage of some (more) lax defending to get the first goal of the game. After that, you feared a "defend at all costs" 70 minutes, and the rest of the first half was a pretty tight and dull affair - with Arsenal's heads looking as though they had dropped.
The second half was, thankfully, a completely different performance. Some reshuffling of personnel saw Kolo Toure come off injured (and pass the captain's armband to Manuel Almunia in the process), Alex Song move to his better position of centre back, Eboue move to his better position of right back, and Walcott come on to add a bit of spice to the game. Altogether after this, Arsenal looked a bit more balanced, and we were back level after around 5 minutes, following an excellent Nasri shot from outside the area. Robin Van Persie made it 2-1 soon after, finally managing to finish off a move where several others had tried and failed to get the ball into the net. Then, in the last minute, Theo Walcott got the goal that his second half performance had deserved - the Everton defenders never looked comfortable with him, and he took full advantage as they started to tire.Other than a victory where we came from behind, there were 3 other fair talking points from the game. The first was who was captain in William Gallas's absence - Kolo Toure for the first half, then Manuel Almunia for the second half. Clearly, Wenger went with experience and length of service, but there were many in the crowd (me included) who would have loved to have seen Cesc Fabregas given the armband - it would have been a great statement of intent.
The second talking point was a disgraceful tackle by Tony Hibbert, where he clattered all the way through Denilson. When a few Arsenal players (most notably Gael Clichy) took exception to this and squared up to him, Hibbert grabbed Clichy by the throat, and a melee ensued. The ridiculous outcome of this was that, despite giving the referee more than enough justification to have sent him off twice (once for the tackle, and once for grabbing Clichy around the neck), he escaped with a pathetic yellow card. And, even more outrageously, Clichy was also booked for his part in the aftermath. So, one player tries to maim another, one player takes exception to this, and both get the same punishment. Next time a player gets injured like Eduardo, I hope that lax refereeing, and especially the failure to punish these tackles properly, is given its fair share of the blame.
And the final talking point was in the stands, specifically in the away section. There appeared to be stuff being thrown down onto the Everton fans, from the upper tiers of Arsenal fans. Clearly and understandably, the Everton fans weren't best pleased about this, but Arsenal's stewarding only seemed to blame the Everton fans, and make the situation much worse. So, there was a 10 minute standoff in the away end, which looked quite animated. This YouTube clip seems to show what was going on, and this opinion piece provides some more detail. Very strange - there has never been an incident like this at Emirates before, so something must have happened to make people decide to throw stuff off the Upper Tier. But why at Everton fans, especially when our next home game is against Spurs - whose fans would of course make a much better target?
Anyway, a good 3 points out of this game, and with Spurs losing again, it was a good weekend overall for Arsenal fans. Talking of Spurs, when The Guardian print a whole page of jokes about your club, you know you are a true laughing stock!
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