Another Bad Day At The Office

Well, another day that started, and ended, so well was punctuated by the all too typical home game. Spirits were high in the garden of the Gunners before the game as good company was mixed with good ale. Always an enjoyable combination I find.

The game has been well documented. Everton, like eighteen other sides that have or will visit the Grove this season, came with little ambition and what has been described elsewhere as a 'flat back ten'. Arsenal created, for the most part, their usual blend of intricate and impressive passing and movement. They also created enough chances to have won comfortably, but Thierry had one of those days, and the best shooting opportunities fell to the least likely net-busters!

A good chunk of the game was lost to the visitors frustrating time-wasting tactics, but let's be clear about who was to blame for that. Mr Riley was charged with refereeing the match, and should have clamped down on it. We cannot continue to berate opponents who look to frustrate a side who, if they are allowed to play, are simply irresistable. It's up to us to find the answers, and most weeks we do. We do require the officials to do the job for which they are increasingly well rewarded though.

It wasn't all doom and gloom. About half of my travelling party managed to make the post-mortem venue, the excellent Twelve Pins, without getting snaffled up in the 'congestion management' queue for Finsbury Park Station. The return home seems much less stressful if one spends an hour or three digesting the afternoons fare while everybody else crams every inch of space on our capitals laughable public transport system.