Arsenal 3 – 0 Sevilla

September 19, 2007 | 68 Comments

Well, he did it again. The scoring machine that is Cesc Fabregas scored yet another screamer. Seemingly imbued with a new sense of, “Oh what the hell, why don’t I shoot and see what happens.”, Cesc’s blast from 30-yards out deflected nicely into the Seville net just short of the half-hour mark to put the Gunners on the front foot.

In all honesty, it didn’t seem to be that difficult a match for Arsenal, and about a half an hour later, Robin van Persie doubled the lead, and pretty much put the result beyond doubt.

Lassana Diarra came on late to make his Arsenal debut, but it was the other late substitution, Dudu, who really drove the nail in the coffin by scoring a simple tap in in the 93rd minute.

The only negative tonight was the injury to Tomas Rosicky, who came off just four minutes after the restart due to what initial reports are indicating was a pulled hamstring.

A successful opening night in Europe, and now it’s Derby in the league at The Grove on Saturday. Kickoff’s at 10 AM ET, and the match will be broadcast live here in the US on Fox Soccer Channel.

As Sam Cooke, The Grateful Dead, James Brown and The Cars all used to sing “Let The Good Times Roll”!

Posted by mikek | Filed Under Match Report 

Arsenal – Sevilla – MatchDay 1

September 19, 2007 | 27 Comments

Well the CL is finally upon us. I love the start of the CL , makes me feel that the season is now really underway and more importantly we get to see football midweek as well. One week without football is too much and I’m sure all of you agree :)

Well anyway as has already been said u don’t win 2 UEFA cups without being good. I havent watched Sevilla much , I don’t watch La Liga that much but here are my thoughts on Juande Ramos’s side.

UpFront: Freddie Kanoute is a threat and Luis Fabiano might also be one but is wasteful (at least in the few times I’ve seen him). Kanoute is much more than a target man…he is very skillful and I don’t know why he isn’t rated a bit higher than he is. Loves the ball on the ground and can score goals. Kerzhakov has scored twice against Recreativo and confidence will be sky high. Now apart from that I’ve only seen Jesus Navas and Alves .. they linked up beautifully numerous times down the right against Espanyol in the cup final. I can safely say that I’ve never seen the media big up a full back as much as they have done to Daniel Alves. That said I do believe Sagna and Hleb have it in them to keep them quiet with the help of Gilberto or Flamini. I don’t know too much about the rest but I’ve read everywhere that Sevilla play football on the ground and are a match for any team. If they do not kick us we could be in for a feast of football.

Now for us:
Eboue, Lehmann, Gallas still out. Why is Gallas still out? Wasn’t he supposed to be back in 3 weeks? The physio team keeps lying about this..like last year I feel.

Sendy comes back into the squad and whether he starts or not remains to be seen but I would start him and put Gilberto into the centre if he is fully fit else just have him on the bench in an emergency. We need big bert this season to stay fit. Kolo has been immense lately as have Sagna and Clichy. if we can play the same back four for most of the season we have a good chance of winning something.

Cesc, Hleb and Mozart must play the entire game ideally and some of them can be rested against Derby on Saturday. If Gilberto is not fit Diaby or Denilson will step in. I don’t know about Theo .. guess he will play FA Cup and Carling Cup this year. I personally will like to see Eduardo n Ade start up front with RVP as a super sub at least for a game, to see how it works and also to see how Eduardo responds to a big game against a high quality opponent. Thats about it.. I think we should have enough in the tank to see of Sevilla…just about. I think it will be…

Arsenal 1 – Sevilla 0

Posted by live_dont_exist | Filed Under Game Preview