Rosenborg 1 Arsenal 1: Could've, should've, but didn't!

Henry - Up for it, but no joy in Norway

Arsenal started with Thierry and Pires up front or at least up frontish, while Reyes remained on the left side of midfield. The rest of the side were just as we started at Manchester on Saturday.

This was a match that could have been a stroll but wasn’t because that’s what we did. Strolled. Rosenborg didn’t have a lot to offer and other than a brief spell after the break, in what should have been a wake up call for Arsenal, we bossed the match whenever we felt the urge. Reyes who played wide left was just not at the races and gave the ball away far too often. Edu was uninspiring and didn’t impress, although his work rate was good. Vieira was strong and quite often effective but also played a few loose balls. Pires played in the hole but didn’t set up too much and rarely played a killer ball. Freddie was busy. Kolo and Sol were commanding, while Cole and Lauren often found the freedom to press forward. Jens was mainly untroubled other than the occasional need to catch a high cross. Henry was a class apart but failed to show the killer touch in front of goal.

We took an early lead when a Henry corner saw Vieira running to the near post where a defender only half cleared to Sol inside the box. Campbell slipped it across to Freddie who knocked it in from close range. 0-1 to The Arsenal and after that the flood gates might have opened. The reason they didn’t was because the match resembled a pre-season friendly rather than a Champions League match. There was plenty of football but little on no fire until the later stages.

Arsenal flags and colours showed the extent of our support in Norway, because a lot of them were to be seen amongst the Rosenborg fans. The Arsenal end made themselves heard early on but the 21,000 crowd didn’t appear to be that noisy. In the main we played controlled football, but almost every move seemed to involve a sloppy pass or lost possession. When we did get our act together we played far too complex a game, always seemingly going for the one pass too many in what amounted to any number of decent moves. The referee from Germany, Florien Meyer played good advantage and spotted most things, he also knew when a good tackle was a good tackle so the game could have been far livelier than it was.

This match isn’t worthy of a detailed report, so I’m not going to give it one. It wasn’t a bad game, we didn’t play badly and we did after all earn a point away from home in Europe. But, and the but is that we’re better than that. Having strolled around prior to half time I thought we might pump up the volume and take them apart after the break. Instead we strolled around and didn’t wake up when two early attacks gave them two opportunities that were not taken. Johnsen headed over and Strands saw his shot blocked by Cole when he could actually have done better. He did so shortly after when Edu lost the ball in midfield. Some neat and effective followed in their best move of the game and Strands fired home into the roof of the net. 1-1 and Rosenborg played their best football in the period after half time. They did have a number of breaks after this but our back four were up to the task.

Freddie rues another missed chance

We had plenty of time to get back at them and after we did get back on top we certainly took the match to them. However we always seemed to slightly over do it and that basically was the story of our match. Our best move was when a killer ball inside the full back found Freddie who crossed to Henry. Henry’s effort was well blocked. This move occurred not long before they scored and although we huffed and puffed, and even upped the pace late on, we didn’t play the simple ball often enough around their box. Our build up play, stray passes apart, was always half-decent. Maybe we were playing well within ourselves, as I’m pretty sure we were but had we played full throttle football we could have been three points clear tonight with the prospect of resting players in the later matches. Arsene didn’t look overly impressed.

As it happened PSV won by the only goal in the other group match, so despite a less than stunning performance Arsenal are a point clear at the top. You may well argue that being top of the League and not losing away is a far more impressive start than last season, and indeed it is, but it’s not the way to win the trophy. By all means coast when we are two goals to the good, but we weren’t and to be brutally frank, without Gilberto we rarely look like we can maintain a clean sheet. Our opening League matches were impressive because we worked seriously hard to play great football and we’re not going to see a repeat of that till we resume full throttle football. I can only hope we’re pacing ourselves for the season ahead.