West Ham 1 – 3 Arsenal: Giroud ends world’s shortest goal ‘drought’
October 7, 2012
I really loved our first goal yesterday.
I love the way we fought our way back into the game having gone behind to the first shot we faced. We’d dominated up to that point and could easily have scored a couple ourselves so to find ourselves a goal down heads could well have dropped. They didn’t. We just got on with the job.
I love how simple and direct it was. No need to pick our way through a defence with fiddly one touch football, just a ball out to Podolski and a fizzing cross to the near post.
I love that we had a centre forward in there that was prepared to take a gamble at that near post. I thought Giroud was excellent yesterday. He held the ball up well, he brought others into play, he showed some great footwork outside the box, he laid on Theo for our second with a beautifully weighted ball and he was an absolute menace in the West Ham box.
I love that Arteta started the move by picking Diame’s pocket in the middle of the field. He shouldn’t even have been on the pitch at that point, his terrible challenge on Arteta somehow not warranting a second yellow from Phil Dowd, presumably because he felt a red would have been harsh considering the first yellow was for celebrating with the crowd after scoring the opener. I’m not saying I agree ‘going over to the crowd’ deserves a yellow in the first place – What kind of game exactly do we want when we’re discouraging players from celebrating scoring goals? – but if you are going to issue them they need to actually count. You can’t have degrees of yellow. You can’t go back and say it’s not really a proper yellow. No one’s going to know where the hell they stand.
Giroud could have already had his name on the score sheet by the time he got us back on track. His smart snap shot early on was well saved at the near post by Jaaskelainen and his shot inside the box looked destined for the roof of the net before Andy Carroll got his big face in the way. But he’s just the sort of player who keeps finding himself in great positions and a player like that is bound to score goals.
The fallacy of his supposed goal drought was underlined yesterday by the statistics being pumped out to supposedly support it. Every news outlet is screaming this morning about him ‘ending his drought’ by telling us that it had been 303 minutes of Premier League football that he hadn’t scored. 303 minutes!! Bloody hell! Imagine that! That’s…what? Just over three games that he hadn’t scored in. What a story! And I suppose none of us are supposed to even mention the fact that he scored in the league cup all the way back through the mists of time on, erm…September 26th.
Having fought our way back into the game you might have expected it to be plain sailing from then on. That wasn’t quite the case. We definitely struggled at times with those high balls into the box and really found Carroll a difficult man to deal with. I’m guessing we won’t be the only ones this season but if Kevin Nolan had had his shooting boots on yesterday from those knock downs we could well have paid for it. Carroll should have got one himself after embarrassingly managing to outleap Mannone only to see the ball float harmlessly wide.
But in the end our quality told. Giroud’s ball to Walcott was great but Theo still had plenty to do. He did it faultlessly. The first touch was a gem to allow him to outpace the defender, he took a little look across goal and then just passed the ball home at the near post with the second touch. That was a mature and intelligent finish and another slap in the face for the Theo haters. Four goals already this season. And he’s only started two games.
Of course the icing on the cake was Cazorla’s late strike. He’s been threatening to score goals like that all season. When he gets the ball in a tiny bit of space outside the opposition box they don’t know whether to back off in anticipation of a through ball or close down to block the shot and the more finishes like that he hits the more confused they’ll be. It was a fantastic strike, not just how clean he hit it but the way he gave the entire defence and goalkeeper the eyes. Everyone in the stadium thought he was going for the curler inside the right hand post. They were all wrong.
Staggeringly he almost managed to top that with the defence splitting ball he put through for Giroud late on. The Frenchman lacked the nous to just lift the ball over the keeper. If he had done that goal would have been watched and rewatched for years to come.
With another international break now upon us it was essential to nab the three points yesterday. It puts us in a reasonable position when we get back ahead of three very winnable games against Norwich, Reading and QPR.
The only apparent injury concern was Kieran Gibbs who seemed to have picked up a thigh strain. Hopefully not too serious. Not as serious at least as Ricardo Vaz Te who dislocated his shoulder in the second half after he “fell heavily after colliding with Arsenal goalkeeper Vito Mannone” according to the BBC Sport website.
Terribly sad news that but maybe he’ll think twice next time he tries to kick someone in the head, eh?
Instant Karma’s gonna get you…
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15 Responses to “West Ham 1 – 3 Arsenal: Giroud ends world’s shortest goal ‘drought’”
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Nice job. I thought exactlythecsame when’s aw the instant karma moment.
Vaz te deserved it, he blatantly looked at Manone and aimed to catch him in the head.
yeah makes me laugh, only yesterday giroud was being called an arsenal flop. ridiculous how people and media dont give a player time. if thats how it is then bergkamp, henry and pires would have been considered flops at first, but turned into 3 LEGENDS
@ gooner1010
agree with you i remember the last centre forward that we signed from france. he scored 10 goals in his first 17 starts sure in his next 18 he only scored 2 but he has been chastised unfairly in my opinion. you know what i would like to see him and giroud play against reading as a pair in the league cup then replaced by walcott and gervinho as a pair in the last 30 mins. the chalk and cheese of those 2 forward lines would scared the living daylights out of reading. a diamond midfield of frimpong wilshire coquelin arshavin and a back 4 of sagna djourou miquel santos would be awesome. may be even szcesney in goal or if not martinez. with squillaci and a few youngsters making up the bench.
after giroud scored his first goal..i knew from then on we were gonna win….true enough we pulled two more goals from the west ham bullies…
Good post and some well made points… I thought Giroud had a great game for us yesterday, and I’m sure that performance will have done a lot to boost his confidence. Giroud brings a different dimension to the team in so much as he is an out and out Centre Forward in every sense of the word, he’s big and physically strong and is a great target man, he holds up play really well and drags opponents defences all over the place creating space for others to exploit.. He has an eye for goal and is always sniffing for a chance to score, he will miss chances (all players in his position do) but he’ll never give up and will get us plenty of goals in the future.. I’d like to see Wenger use Walcott down the middle more as I feel he would benefit from the knock downs and lay offs that Giroud can provide.. Walcott is a better finisher than Gervinho.. Good team performance yesterday and Arsenal were good value for the 3 well deserved points.. This team can only get better and they look a well balanced side and with the likes of Podolski and Cazorla in the side goals can come from anywhere, we no longer depend on just one player to score the goals.. I believe we have a trophy in us this season and with Wilshere on his way back to add even more creativity, we are going to be an exciting side to watch… Finally, Jenkinson has really surprised a lot of us this season his confidence is growing by the game, he plays with his heart on his sleeve and I’m sure he will develop into one of the best Right Backs in English football over the next few years, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him get an England call up soon…
bc i agree with ya fella i mean how can a player keep form when not in a consistent run off games which was the case with chamakh when rvp came bak fit.
To continue the theme of what we love…
I love Giroud’s doggedness to keep going as well as his deft touches which has seen him rack up so many assist’s already. West Ham’s big target man Andy Carroll played well but compared to Giroud as our big target man, he offers us so much more as cultured footballer.
I love Mannone’s toughness, I am sure his bruising encounter yesterday has turned his skin all shades of purple today. It seems that he has been fitted with steel as the West Ham players came off worse against his chin, ear and other body parts.
I love big Mert and I was happy to see him back in defence yesterday. Also the irritating constant narrative about him turning slower than a tanker seems to of turned into appreciation for his intelligent marking.
I love Theo’s as a supersub winger – breaking at pace, running down the flanks at defences when the opposition are most knackered. Could he be our best substitution weapon since Freddie Ljungberg?
I love that the midfield was much better yesterday and more credit should be given to Ramsey’s tireless work in midfield. Yes he got nutmegged, which led to a goal, but the fact is he was everywhere, receiving passes, taking up great positions, defending, tackling and covering a lot of ground at speed. There is no denying that there is room for improvement, but I would say that he was much better in midfield than Coquelin and helped drive us forward. He looked like he was playing his heart out, enjoying his football and did’nt go missing.
I love the Away fans, I’ve been to Upton park few times in the past and the atmosphere can be pretty tense. I have half jokingly nicknamed them the Stokies of London. The Arsenal fans gave as good as they got yesterday and you could hear them in full voice, sometimes drowning out the Hammers. Did us proud.
Oh & I love Marble Halls, keep the great write ups coming!!
Great post again, MH
Love the comments, Goona Gal. Doggedness is *the* word for Giroud. He is like Benayoun in that way. And nimble, too.
I think with Coquelin vs Ramsey it’s just a question of whether you want to shore up the middle a bit (Le Coq) or provide more attacking impetus and link-up play. Both great prospects, but Aaron further ahead in development of course.
“linking up with the forwards,” I meant. Ramsey is much more likely to be seen bursting into the box.
Great to see Cazorla get his rangefinder spot on this time. He’s gotten in a position to score a startling number of times this season already and fluffed his shots or had the keeper make some miraculous saves in other cases. Of course it’s hard to criticize him because he’s been SO good at everything else that his shots could have been going off on the touch line every time and I’d still have loved him. This could be the start of a flood though, as he seems to get himself in the right place for an edge of the box shot again and again and again, and his ability to take that shot on with either foot or lay it off with a disguised pass like that absurd one for Giroud combined with his preternatural ability to beat a man on the dribble almost every time, is so exciting.
I’ve also been pleased that every game I’ve watched with him in, the commentary teams, despite whatever other deficiencies they might have, are singing his praises. I think every game I’ve heard the phrase “maybe the best signing of the season.” Maybe I shouldn’t be praising commentators for pointing out the obvious but it’s gratifying to hear.
Of course in the Chelsea game this was counterbalanced by them repeatedly referring to Oscar as a “young boy” who is “still learning”, and then failing to in any way observe that he’s the same age or older than Ramsey, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Coquelin, Jenkinson, and Wilshire.
Ramsey was useless.Tireless embrassing the Wenger basic philosphy of one should be able to pass.I wish he is used as a sub, that’s when he can read the game.for 90 min he is a liability.
@ Fungunner – I really like Giroud’s movement, one of our former big target men Adebayor could finish but was also guilty of sometimes standing around hand on hips waiting to receive the ball, which used to wind me up. Giroud seems like a genuine team player.
With regards to Le Coq, I agree, I think he is best used to shut up shop. Though I would say with a year playing regularly on loan, no serious injury and last year’s game time, I would say he was even stevens with Ramsey, if not slightly ahead. What I would like to see from Coquelin is for him to understand and develop his defensive game further. Better tackling, positioning and communication with defence so that when he does come on he has a greater impact. Sometimes he seems unsure of himself.
I have also been impressed by giroud so far. Never hides from attention from big tough defenders and is always available. His distribution is tremendous ans has already laid on a few superb passes for team mates to score. He sees a pass and then puts it on a plate. I am sure he will score a few more before the season ends….