On the coldest day in London for over 10 years - it never got above freezing all day, Arsenal fans were not exactly in the mood for another display of negative football, which is to be expected when Bolton are in town. The away side named only 4 subs, presumably to make a point about how stretched they are, and to try to justify the inevitable negativity and all out defence. For their part, Arsenal were suffering from injury losses too, Gallas joining the casualties, and that meant Kolo Toure became our seventh captain of the season so far.
In the shivering, freezing cold, the first half wasn't too bad an affair (at least by the standards of recent home games), the highlight being a decent Van Persie chance, where he controlled the ball, and went for a nice flick with the outside of his boot. Other than that, the talk at half time was whether this was the coldest football match in memory - recalling happy days at Oldham, Middlesbrough and Stoke.
As expected, and as usual, the second half saw Arsenal step things up a bit in the search for a goal. There was an increasing amount of "knocking at the door" (as Arsene Wenger would put it) - including a fair sitter missed by Adebayor (who had yet another nightmare game - his form really is awful at the moment); and a very decent long range shot from Kolo Toure.
As the half went on, we saw the predictable substitutions from Arsenal, which really illustrate how few options we have available at the moment. Bendtner and Vela came on for Eboue and Diaby - hardly inspiring. It did at least mean that Nasri was able to move infield, where he looks like our best creative option in the absence of Cesc Fabregas.
Finally, when it looked like we might be heading for an unbelievably frustrating 0-0 draw (with Kevin Davies as the irritator in chief); Bendtner made a decent contribution for once, stealing in at the far post to put the finish on an excellent ball that Van Persie (again looking sharp and generally at his best) had put across. Bendtner has been far from impressive lately, but this was an important goal, and will hopefully be the start of a bit of form for him - we certainly need it from either him or Adebayor! The second league game in a row that finished 1-0 to the Arsenal - at the moment, we all realise that there are many worse results than that.
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