Wednesday 16 February 2011

Arsenal 2-1 Barcelona


Great game, Arsenal went behind in the first half via a goal from World Cup winner David Villa. Barca threatened all the first half as Arsenal looked to play a very high defensive line in order to take the game to Barca. They did that and made themselves chances yet kept being left open when any one of Barca's midfield played a delightful through ball for either Messi or Villa.

Barca ended the first half with over 300 passes completed, more than an average premier league team makes in a whole game. They completely dominated, playing triangle football effortlessly.

Second half Arsenal came out playing exactly the same, giving the ball away cheaply and having to work much harder to get it back. England midfielder Jack Wilshere shone throughout the game, looking comfortable on the ball. To think he isn't even 20 and was playing up against the two best Centre Midfield players in the world.

Half way through the second half Barca took off Villa and replaced him with the more defensive Keita. This substition looked to help Arsenal out with Clichy putting Robin Van Persie to the byline. RVP had the choice to pull it back to an oncoming Arsenal forward but instead chose to shoot to the near post where a stunned Valdes totally misjudged his decision. RVP than ran straight over to his manager, Wenger, and the whole stadium erupted. A year on from a crushing Barca display, Arsenal had got back in the game!

The final ten minutes, Wilshere played a ball forward to Fabregas, who then played in Nasri. Nasri ran down on goal, but just when he got into the box, turned round and assesed his options... Played a delicate ball straight through the middle of the area, passed two Barca defenders and fell kindly for Arshavin, who finished neatly passed Valdes.

Arsenal had clinched the 2-1 victory, setting up the return leg nicely on March 8th in Barcelona.

27 comments:

  1. awesome game, never thought Arsenal would win

    ReplyDelete
  2. Arsenal made it all the way :D

    ReplyDelete
  3. Surprising since Barcelona have great players. Well done to them.

    ReplyDelete
  4. what an awesome game, it was so thrilling.

    ReplyDelete
  5. lol i saw that game... it was slow till the 2nd half

    ReplyDelete
  6. great blog and thanks for your comments! following ;)

    ReplyDelete
  7. i was really suprised to read that arsenal pulled it back and managed to even win the game, it sounded like aresnal were being dominated by barca

    ReplyDelete
  8. I missed this game, nice to see arsenal bring it back though.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I saw the two goals, they were absolutely amazing!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Nice game, replays were awesome

    ReplyDelete
  11. "Barca ended the first half with over 300 passes completed," woah, Go Barca!

    ReplyDelete
  12. I just became your 100th follower! Congrats!! (I feel so special, haha).

    And yeah, I expected Barcelona to win .. what the hell happened lol.

    ReplyDelete
  13. It was a good game, and Barca did do exceptionally well.

    This is the second blog I've come across to talk about this match, but you went into more detail and made a much better post.

    Followed. Check me out sometime at:
    http://riotoflegends.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  14. sounded like a great game

    ReplyDelete
  15. What a clutch victory for Arsenal! They deserved it.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Wow what a game. It was awesome, seriously haven't seen a game like that since June. I've always been an Arsenal fan but haven't seen many games since Henry and Bergkamp left :/ But this has definitely changed my mind.

    ReplyDelete
  17. I meant to comment yesterday. ARSENALLLL, IN YOUR FACE BARECELONA

    ReplyDelete
  18. Wilshere isn't even 20 yet?! Dang, I thought he was older, lol.

    ReplyDelete