Above Spurs now !
Everton 0 Arsenal 1
Arsenal 55 points.
Spurs 54
Chelsea 49
All those defenders must have been reading ANR yesterday.
It was the night of the centrebacks: Vermaelen, Cahill and Coates.
Vermaelen scored after 8 minutes at Goodison and Arsenal won 1-0. He jumped beautifully to head in Van Persie\’s inswinging corner from the right.
Gary Cahill scored for Chelsea in 60 at Man City.
But Tevez came on in 65 and Aguero got a penalty for 1-1 in 78 and then Nasri played a lovely one-two with Tevez and slotted a world class goal to save Mancini’s arse.
Like Man City, QPR came from behind to win. Sebastian Coates, giant defender, scored the first goal at Loftus Road after 54 minutes. When a ball was cleared off the line and was dropping 15 yards from goal, Coates jumped up and hook-volleyed a ball that was five feet off the ground and his shot dipped and went in under the crossbar.
On Sky Sports News, Iain Dowie said Vermaelen had a blinder.
He also said, “Brilliant play by Fellaini ! He\’s been outstanding all night.â€
Arsenal kept a clean sheet. Maybe the team is rediscovering its DNA.
One nil to the Arsenal.
That’s the DNA of 1971 and the DNA of George Graham and Tony Adams and Nigel Winterburn.
But Arsenal were lucky when Song got away with a big mistake because the linesman made a big mistake.
Song gave a goal away with a sloppy pass to Osman. Chasing his mistake, Song rashly left a huge hole between Koscielny and Vermaelen. Gibbs was on the halfway line and Sagna was nowhere to be seen.
Osman passed to Fellaini, first time to Tim Cahill, first time into Drenthe’s well-timed run.
Nobody in the box except the keeper as Drenthe exploded from the right into vast green acres of space, a fast winger’s dreamland.
Drenthe took a neat left-footed touch on Cahill\’s pass and buried a right-footed shot for 1-1.
But the flag went up. The replay showed Drenthe was at least a yard onside.
A shocking ball by Song. And, if Arsenal are going to play that way, with both fullbacks pushing up the line, an idiotic response to his own mistake. If you make a mistake, don’t make another one straight away.
But Arsenal nicked it, as we thought they might.
Shame that Ramsey hasn’t found his shooting boots. If he\’d scored, Arsenal would have won more comfortably.
QPR were losing 2-0 to Liverpool with 17 minutes to go. Then Rangers scored three goals !
Spurs grabbed a point against Stoke with a diving header from Van Der Vaart in the 93rd minute.
Clean sheets are important.
The only Premier League team to keep a clean sheet last night was Arsenal.