Well that will do nicely! After a couple of home defeats in other competitions, the visit of Liverpool promised to be an important clash for both teams. At kick-off, following Chelsea's defeat, Arsenal and Liverpool were first and second in the league respectively and there was a lot of discussion on whether either team can stay in the hunt for the title. The result and performance thankfully suggested it looks far more likely for Arsenal and the five point lead at the top of the table certainly gives us hope.
With a late injury to Jack Wilshere the team rather picked itself. There were some concerns given the injury to Mathieu Flamini that we would struggle to contain the on-form partnership of Suarez and Sturridge but Mikel Arteta produced his finest display of the season in front of a solid back four to help keep an invaluable and impressive clean-sheet. Given our outstanding offensive play and the two superb goals it would be easy to ignore Mikel's performance but a glance of the stats shows you just how impressive he was. He completed a fantastic 100 passes, 29 more that the second highest (Özil) including a vital ball to Sagna in the build up to the first goal, he had 13 ball recoveries (equal most with Skrtel) and he won more tackles than anyone else on the pitch (7). The only negative I can remember was letting Henderson run unchallenged into the box, although perhaps that was a deliberate ploy given how shambolic Henderson is.
He wasn't the only Spanish midfielder putting in his best performance since returning from injury though, no Sir. Santi was superb and got a much deserved and beautifully taken goal in the 19th minute. A well-weighted ball down the right flank found Sagna who pulled his cross back behind the near-post run of Olivier Giroud to the big target man Santi Cazorla, who played a clever headed one-two with the post before showing his class with a beautiful volley past Simon Mignolet. It sounds silly and I know its a cliché but the first goal was always going to be vital and from then on our superior quality in the middle of the park paid dividends. As Nick predicted in his excellent preview a few days ago, Arsenal's midfield were too good for Gerrard, Lucas and Henderson and I thought this was where the game was won.
A lot has been made of this Suarez and Sturridge partnership but yesterday Koscielny did a very good job of handling Suarez, excluding one moment where Suarez turned him and left him for dead. Thankfully Sturridge was extremely poor - his most notable contributions being missing a free-header and taking an absurd dive in the first half, which annoyingly went unpunished by the referee. The Arsenal fans sang: "Are you Suarez in disguise?" They also gave the bitey, diving, racist, former transfer-target some more grief with chants of "You should've signed for a big club."
Liverpool brought Coutinho on for Cissokho at half-time but he was returning from injury and did not look sharp at all. We looked open at the beginning of the second half and our defensive performance, although encouraging, wasn't as convincing as the clean sheet suggested. The game was taken out of Liverpool's reach by a quite superb strike from the best Welsh footballer plying his trade in England or Spain at the moment, Aaron Ramsey - he controlled a short-ball from Özil, looked up to find he had time and space 20 yards from goal and struck the sweetest of dipping half-volleys. There isn't much left to be said about Ramsey this season - his transformation has been extraordinary and we are lucky to have him, and for that matter, a manager who was able to bring the best out of him.
It would take too long to single out all of the players who deserved praise today but I will say what a joy the team performance was to watch. I enjoyed Özil's statement that we played at "Formula 1 speed" and certainly there was no handbrake is sight. Now let's hope the team continues to spoil us by keeping it up in two big games against Dortmund and Manchester United in the next week
Man of the Match: Mikel Arteta
That was a lovely cheesecake! Great blog!
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