***NEWCASTLE VS ARSENAL + Other Wednesday Night games***SPOILERS***

Man of the Match definitely Mike Dean for me (assuming it's judged on 90mins and not stoppage time!).

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Adebayor has an amazing first touch, and I haven't seen better chest control from anyone this season.

Overall I think a draw was fair, Arsenal just never seemed to really get going and were looking to hit Newcastle on the break. Eduardo struggled to get into the game and without Fabregas there wasn't much creativity in midfield.

The main plus points I can see from tonight's performances were a good show of energy from Diarra and some solid keeping from Almunia. There are two things he does very well: 'Sweeping' (rushing out to clear through balls) and making the ball stick when he saves it. Doesn't fumble many out to onrushing forwards.
 
Cracking game that.
Top marks to the Newcastle lads for battling so hard. Alan Smith deserved player of the match.
Man of the match...have to agree with HangTime, the ref, Mike Dean. Handled the game so well. We often criticise the ref but top marks for Mr Dean today.

Fair result in the end i think. I though we might clinch a winner when we had about 3-4 corners in a row.

Hopefully this will be a turning point in Newcastle's season and we can use this as a fresh start.

Only player that disappointed me today was Joey Barton. Had a quiet game, couple of misplaced passes i thought. I suppose he was there to hassle the Arsenal midfield and get the tackles in with Nicky Butt though so maybe a better option than Emre.
 
I must congratulate Newcastle on their total domination on us in the second half. We were second to everyball so fair play to them on the draw.

I'm still quite annoyed at Adebayor, once he'd scored that goal he just got too selfish during some our counter attacks which meant that three obvious one-on-one's weren't formed. He can be quite clinical, but a lot of the time very very stupid while on the ball. So fustrating. He's a good man to target as a lone striker, but just lacks the quality to hold it long enough. As a result, not even Tomo could make forward runs properly. This was also the wrong game for Eduardo to start - Bendtner need to start as he's more physical and has had more experience in English football, as a result he came on too late - and I don't think he even saw the ball for more than a few seconds in half an hour.

Bring on Middlesborough, and hopefully one or two of our first team midfielders back. Totally missed the playmaking abilities of Hleb and Cesc, and the little battler Flamini. Gilberto needs to be sold immediately, he's just continuosly short :(
 
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Not a very good result for Arsenal, pretty disappointed in their performance especially the 2nd half...Newcastle should have never been able to equalise:mad:. Lucky result for Newcastle though, they did out play us in the 2nd half. I guess not having Hleb, Fabregas and Flamini hurt us pretty bad...should have been an easy easy 3 pts for us...

Gilberto as much as i hate to say it is fast becoming worse and worse:(...his heart just isnt in Arsenal anymore and like Greenlizard said above me...its time to sell him i think. His last game in the Champs league was pretty terrible as well...
 
HangTime said:
I've said it before and I'll say it again, Adebayor has an amazing first touch, and I haven't seen better chest control from anyone this season.
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He does? Pity he failed to show his amazing touch ONCE in the second half. I thought he was on a one man mission to see how many times he could either fall over or miscontrol the ball. I thought he was absolutely horrid after the goal. The sheer stupidity he showed in failing to get himself onside when Rosicky was bursting forward, and THEN having the cheek to scream at Rosicky about it summed his second half up. There's been some jokes that perhaps he doesn't understand the offside rule because he gets caught offside so many times a game.. after that incident tonight I'm starting to wonder whether he REALLY doesn't know it. Finally he should have passed to Eduardo early in the first half which would have almost certainl led to a goal.

Newcastle outplayed us today (we missed Hleb and Fabregas BADLY) and deserved the win in my eyes.

And you guys are right about Gilberto.. looks so out of place in this new Arsenal team. Sloppy passing, dwells on the ball and just looks generally slow.
 
I'm relieved we came away with a point from that game, could very easily have gone Newcastles way. Our defending can look rather erratic at times and we've finally been caught out trying to play out of our area.

Eduardo didn't do much and neither did Gilberto & Adebayor was pretty shocking except for his goal, selfish and sloppy passing.

Mike Dean, cracking performance though, really helped the game flow and most of his decisions were spot on.
 
Not a great performance but a draw away with so many key players out injured will do for me. Still 4 points clear as well.

CliffyG said:
Appalling second half from us, no composure and far too many long balls. Just needed someone to get their foot on it and calm it down. Adebayor was a complete waste of space apart from the goal, can't pass and can't dribble, every time he got the ball he lost it and it came straight back again. I was hoping Rosicky would have more of an influence but he was pretty poor too.
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Without Hleb and Fabregas our creative side and usual our controlling of the game wouldn't be at it's normal level and that showed today.
 
Aye i know we suffer without them but i think we still had the basis for a much better performance than that. The second half was embarrassing, collect ball punt out for throw or hoof to Adebayor who would promptly lose it etc. Eboue and Rosicky were let downs considering we were relying on them for driving from midfield.
 
Don't think we got Eboue involved enough and Rosicky looked bright when he went up top. Problem was Eduardo didn't do too well on the wing and our main problem in general was we didn't hold on to the ball long enough thus were not able to get proper service to our attacking midfielders and strikers.
 
In the first half all he did was run around chasing the ball. Even in the second half all he did was flick that ball on for Martins to dummy. He can't pass and can't score so i don't see what he does apart from run around. I really can't see what he offers any team and think he's vastly overrated.
 
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Spawn said:
Not a very good result for Arsenal, pretty disappointed in their performance especially the 2nd half...Newcastle should have never been able to equalise:mad:. Lucky result for Newcastle though, they did out play us in the 2nd half. I guess not having Hleb, Fabregas and Flamini hurt us pretty bad...should have been an easy easy 3 pts for us...

Gilberto as much as i hate to say it is fast becoming worse and worse:(...his heart just isnt in Arsenal anymore and like Greenlizard said above me...its time to sell him i think. His last game in the Champs league was pretty terrible as well...
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gilberto just looks very slow on the ball this season and he always looks in danger of getting swamped and losing posession.

i don't think it's that bad a result, you can never bank on 3pts away from home and to their credit newcastle hustled pretty well.

if they play like that for the rest of the season they shouldn't have too many problems.
 
Greenlizard0 said:
Why should we care about Chelsea (is that what you were implying? Or was it a general gibe in our direction? ;))
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Neither, don't flatter yourself, there were other games on that were excluded from the original and the edited thread title as Weebull mentioned earlier. :)
 
Mark M said:
Were you watching the same game I was? Smith was inspirational and your defence couldnt handle him at all.
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Not really, they did the same as they did with Carew. They dropped back, allowed him to the win the headers unchallenged, and waited for the 2nd ball.

JohnnyG said:
Neither, don't flatter yourself, there were other games on that were excluded from the original and the edited thread title as Weebull mentioned earlier. :)
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Other teams/matches? Are you sure?! :P
 
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