Surprised he saw it.

Regardless how crap we are, we still managed to do a double over Arsenal. Maybe, just maybe Jose got a point keep picking Cesc, it was the other guy that's causing all the problems. If this happened 5 months ago, everyone would want Costa banned for getting the poor German trailer sent off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Szglk1gkoJg

For any but hurt Arsenal fan claiming Costa dived the video above clearly shows contact in the first instance of the clip and again at 4 seconds where both clearly show Mertasacker left knee taking out Costa's trailing left foot. 

There is no need to try and find blame in someone else or whine about it like your ever so classless manager, you should be looking towards your own player who made a stupid tackle that was always going to be a red card.

Edited January 25, 201610 yr by PedroMendez

Morning after the night before.

 

Best I have felt on a Monday for a while.

 

Love beating that lot as much as pretty much any other team and yesterday was just delicious, in so many ways.

 

Worst season in about 25 years and we beat them home and away without conceding.

 

We, arguably, have very little to play for in the league where as they are going game for game against Leicester and City for the first league title in over a decade and we still turn up, crash the party, f**k everything up and then leave.

 

Oh, and the scenes outside the Emirates (and all the way back to Central London) were, once again, staggering. No other ground in London, apart from maybe Craven Cottage, would you get away with taking the piss like we do there. Strolling through their manner with no escort, taking the piss, singing whatever we want, completely unchallenged with not even the slightest bit of response. A good few hundred camped outside the away end again basically having a party at Arsenals expense, singing, bouncing, laughing..... you could say it was over celebrating but I don't care- we loved it and they were hating it, that's good enough for me.

 

Oh, and a quick shout out to the irate Arsenal fan at full time at the divide between home and away fans who took exception to Chelsea fans celebrating a win decided that all he had left was to play the race card and accused our entire away enclosure of being racist. He was very angry. I hope he is ok now.

Oh God, I dreamt last night that they equalised - it was so realistic, a drive from outside the box into the bottom left corner of the goal.  Had to physically wake myself up and remember what had really happened!

I thoroughly enjoyed this victory, especially against this deluded bunch of fans. The videos in Arsenal Fan TV were f**king hilarious and I had a good laugh watching how gloomy and distraught their faces were after claiming they'll rip us apart in their previews. Blah blah blah. Anyway, our overall team performance was superb and it's good to see our lads exhibiting strong team spirit and resilience to get a result from this game.

 

Our defence was exceptional and did well to negate most of Arsenal's threats when they were piling up the pressure. Zouma and Terry threw their bodies to block most shots, Dave comfortably dealt with Campbell, Chamberlain and Bellerin for most parts of the game, and Ivanovic provided an assist and didn't get roasted as badly as some posters have said before the game. This defending highlight was my personal favourite in the game. Well done, guys. 

 

 

 

Our CMs did pretty well too. Cesc was world-class last night and showed glimpses of form we've seen in the first half of last season. Mikel continues to prove his doubters wrong and put in another good performance. He has upped his game recently and is currently one of our best performing players IMO. Well, Matic was not bad and made a couple of good tackles to stop Arsenal's midgets. It's definitely an improvement after a bad run of form.

 

Our attacking plays were decent and we could've been 3 or 4 goals up had we been more clinical, but a 1 - 0 win is still good enough for me. Costa has been doing fantastically well for the past few games and I hope he continues his fine form. Hopefully he didn't get too badly injured as we really need him to turn our season around. That was a good goal scored by him and an even better cross made by Ivanovic by the way.

 

 

 

Anyway, did any of your Arsenal-supporting mates moaned about Costa diving in that challenge and said our win was disgusting? The red card seems like a right one to me as there was a slight touch made in that challenge and Costa was also through on goal. Hmm, I guess booing Cesc is not disgusting then? They should learn from how we treat our Big Pete. Bunch of hypocrites.

 

 

 

Just a little random stat, we're currently on the longest unbeaten run in PL this season with 3 wins and 4 draws. Our players are performing well lately and the results have shown this. We're also 4 points away from the top 10 and 14 points away from the top 4. If we can maintain our form and do even better, then a top 4 finish is still possible. We can do it, lads.

 

Onwards and upwards.

I had to give it a few minutes before I approached the office Arsenal fan to ask if he wanted to talk about football. I let him have about 10 minutes actually. Plenty of time to compose himself, surely. How wrong I was. He started off by saying it was the second time this season "He" had got somebody sent off. He then went on to say that "all" the pundits thought the ref had got it wrong. At this point it was only right that I pointed out that a foul had been committed and that in fact all the pundits had actually said the ref had got it right and that he was confusing the pundits with Wenger.  (I'm not sure but Souness may have disagreed but generally the consensus was with Costa.) When I went on to point out that AFC had only one shot on target and that CFC had a stonewall penalty disallowed the 10 men comments started coming. I had to point out that the 10 men issue was their fault and Giroud wouldn't have stopped the goal. The dismay, the red mist, the complete and utter dumbfoundedness of the look made this of all Mondays the best this season.

Missed the game but saw the highlights on MOTD last night.

Reading on here leads me to think they were pretty biased to Arsenal because it was endless Arsenal attacks and we only got the goal and pen appeal really.

Not how I read it went yesterday going by that

Arsenal bias yes. With Hazard not on for most of the game I felt Fab and Costa were targetted.

https://www.change.org/p/deport-diego-costa-deport-diego-costa

 

Still grinning like a loon this morning, I too thought we would lose, My Mum kept the faith, she called it 0-1  before the game. And now my Husband wants her round for dinner every time we're on the telly, as we don't lose when she is there.

I thought we played well, although I must concede I spent a lot of the game with my hands over my eyes, so I may be wrong about that.

 

Classy club Arsenal though aren't they, I expect they get it from their manager. He's reaction after the game was pure gold, vintage Wenger.

Missed the game but saw the highlights on MOTD last night.

Reading on here leads me to think they were pretty biased to Arsenal because it was endless Arsenal attacks and we only got the goal and pen appeal really.

Not how I read it went yesterday going by that

 

Did MOTD mention the penalty we didn't get when Fabregas was bodychecked in the box?

Did MOTD mention the penalty we didn't get when Fabregas was bodychecked in the box?

 

yes, and all agreed peno !!

This is how you treat past club legends. Take note you Gooners.

seriously, why are arsenal the only team that boo their past players? barring liverpool, do any other club do that? we could have easily booed cech if we wanted, or mata, lukaku, de bruyne or the other myriad of players who have left us for other teams in the prem or europe, but we refrain from doing so. classless and fickle fan base if ever i seen one. 

Edited January 25, 201610 yr by enigma

They are the pantomime boo boys; can't think of a returning  ex player who they haven't boo'd.

 

This is what makes their fans so easy to laugh at. They don't help themselves and on most occasions the player who they are booing normally ends up shafting them- it's all good.

if you like Claude, check this guy out & guess what? He is right

 

 

Love it!

 

"Only one player in this team has the mentality to win the league and he plays in goal"

 

"what is it with Chelsea, why do they get in our heads"

 

"we still play the same sort of crap against Chelsea"

Did you hear what Cesc said when asked by Shreeves if he deserved a pk?

 

I'm surprised the FA hasn't already punished him for it.

Missed the game but saw the highlights on MOTD last night.

Reading on here leads me to think they were pretty biased to Arsenal because it was endless Arsenal attacks and we only got the goal and pen appeal really.

Not how I read it went yesterday going by that

 

What it showed was Arsenals only attacks. We controlled the game more or less from start to finish. If Clattenburg had given the penalty as he should have, a yellow card would have followed and they would have been down to nine and at our mercy.

Thanks God, i'm not an arsenal fan. Feel a little bad for them and the guy above speaks the truth. They are so deperate.

 

For me, this game was all about our benefiting from the unbelievable amount of prejudicial ‘sticking to the narrative’ on show when we play Arsenal these days. I’d put my evidence for this into three groups - the print prejudice, the pride and prejudice of a certain Arsene Wenger, and the misplaced Media prejudice - all of which served to concentrate a Chels mindset and befuddle Arse preparations. In that order and taking The Guardian as a typical example of self-fulfilling narrative prophecy in print, I could start stating my case with this news outlet’s week-long online feeding of Gooner frenzy, with articles such as the one detailing how Arsenal and Ozil in particular would dominate Chelsea, the German said to be on the brink of being hailed as the new Bergkamp. Or maybe it would be better just to begin with the one entitled ‘All-seeing Cech lays to rest Arsenal demons of Chelsea’s Mourinho era’, whatever that particular word concoction might actually mean. 

 

But then again, perhaps the point is already well made by merely referring to this swing-o-meter of opinion, as we all witnessed that steady rise in journalistic craving for significant change in both London club’s fortune throughout the Jose years of supremacy. Indeed, it could be argued that the Special One’s going was bound to force the pointer off it’s fulcrum and deep into any Red Zone of gleeful these-things-go-in-cycles philosophy. So, on to Arsene, recalling as I will the corresponding fixture at the Bridge and the Arsenal manager’s expression of amazement at Costa’s ability to ‘get away with it every week’, alluding to his behaviour on the park and how unacceptable it was. In the Frenchman’s eyes, his blind one was easily turned on Gabriel’s over-reaction, whilst his acutely observant one gazed critically on Costa’s criminality. This week, once more in Wenger’s World, it was but one simple step for him to take, resetting the narrative and reconfiguring Per’s problem to conform to what had gone before, whereas I'm seriously at a loss to understand how anyone in their right mind can suggest that such an ill-judged and ill-timed tackle, committed on a forward who has outwitted the defender and is clearly going to get a goal scoring opportunity, is not a red card offence. Yet Wenger and the Costa narrative deems it otherwise -Voila! 

 

Delusional though it may be, this Costa concept is constantly fuelled by the Media’s portrayal of Diego as the game’s pantomime villain, and it is little wonder that poor Arsene now acts like one of those storybook-fed kids, star-struck and out there in the audience, who instinctively boo every on-stage arrival of the bad man himself. Of course, unlike in the fairytale frequented by the Frenchman, the real truth of the matter casts ‘good guys’ in far from blameless light - Mertesacker killed this game with a suicidal challenge and Wenger compounded the felony by subbing Geroud off. Sentiment and woolly thinking then kept Walcott on the pitch, no thought given to the fact that he needs space in behind to prosper and our low block system, with Zouma as the right-sided CB, always likely to provide speedy cover for Branna. Once again, perceived narrative regarding both Walcott’s ability and Branna’s vulnerability influenced the situation in our favour and Arsenal’s only real chance of fighting back with 10 men [Giroud as the focal point] was discarded by a coach who has never been able to accept a simple truth - his teams have not been good enough to beat ours ever since Roman arrived. 

 

Lastly, we have the Media narrative, inexplicably expressed by Souness on Sky, with his ’cute’ verdict hastily buttressed by the one clear replay of the incident [from behind both players showing Mertesacker making clear contact on Costa's leg] being swiftly removed from the coverage after a single showing - it was to be replaced by two replays providing inconclusive evidence and if I had been Jamie Carragher, having already stated categorically that it was a sending-off offence, I’d have been screaming for its return to back up my case. But no, he didn’t and it was left to the BBC MOTD coverage to restore the critical viewpoint to our screens later in the evening. Not that this was anything more than a failed attempt to level out previous bias in my book, bearing in mind their commentary on the game continually posed the pleading [heart] question - what do Arsenal need to do to score? No neutrality in evidence here, just typical beeb narrative in action.  

 

Oh, a final observation, personal narrative put to one side and credit where credit is due... the referee did just fine.

Fantastic result for us, Wenger is so one dimensional, I don't blame their fans for being pissed off with it, in my opinion Wenger is going to cost them the title

 

 

 

 

Oh, a final observation, personal narrative put to one side and credit where credit is due... the referee did just fine.

 

 

I agree. I know some are moaning about the non-award of the penalty on Fabregas which on replays looked clear despite the fact we didn't make too big an appeal. But other than that I thought he had a great game and I think a lot of refs would have bottled sending off Mertesaker and only produced a yellow, so as you say, credit where credit's due.

Love it!

 

"Only one player in this team has the mentality to win the league and he plays in goal"

 

"what is it with Chelsea, why do they get in our heads"

 

"we still play the same sort of crap against Chelsea"

It's funny, but he's right

It's funny, but he's right

 

Spot on!  As soon as he said only one player has the mentality, I think we all knew exactly who he meant!