A potentially great weekend turns into an indifferent one

Arsenal 3 - Hull 1

Nasri scoring a well taken goal in the 82'

Scoring Tally
Arsenal
Adebayor 30'
Nasri 82'
Bendtner 86'
Hull
Cousin 65'

Arsenal Starting Lineup
-------------------Almunia-------------
Clichy------Djourou---Toure-----Sagna
Nasri------Denilson---Diaby-----Eboue
--------Van Persie--------Adebayor----

I was pretty excited at halftime of the Chelsea / Stoke game I was watching. The scores of the four games I was keeping tabs besides Arsenal/Hull were:

Halftime
Man U 0 - 0 Bolton
Sunderland 1 - 0 Aston Villa
Chelsea 0 - 0 Stoke

If the games were to end at these scores, it would have been a perfect weekend for Arsenal. All of the gunner's major rivals except Liverpool (who play tomorrow) would have dropped points. Unfortunately Man United, Aston Villa and Chelsea all won which made it mandatory that Arsenal win to keep pace.

Hull started off very brightly, creating some pressure through crosses and corners. Mendy was causing some problems for Clichy and Geovanni had a few long range drives on Almunia's net. Arsenal started to get a foot on the game by playing neat passes and keeping possession well.

In the 27' minute Van Persie whipped a free kick which came inches from scoring. Myhill made a fantastic save fingertip save to keep the shot off.

3 minutes later, Adebayor proved to us all of the time practise jumping was worth it as he jumped higher than the Hull defenders to head a looper to the far corner. Quality goal from the Togo hitman and helped settle some nerves. The rest of the half went without incident and Arsenal took a 1-0 lead into halftime.

In the 53' minute Manucho replaced Halmosi as Hull employed a two-striker system to take the game to Arsenal. Manucho, a Man U player on loan, was very involved in the action and had a legitimate penalty appeal shot down when Djourou missed the ball and headed him. He came off with a swollen eye but kept playing, fair play to the lad. Daniel Cousin worked very hard throughout the game and was rewarded in the 65th as Mendy swings a deflected corner in and Cousin powered it past Almunia. Clichy played too far off Mendy due to his pace and the partial deflection took the ball over Toure and Cousin had a free header.

Diaby and Eboue were having their usual game, not really contributing and I do not know what Wenger sees in these two. Maybe because of the lack of options due to injury or because he has a fetish for Africans, Wenger stubbornly keeps on choosing those two to play. Eboue was replaced by Bendtner and the Dane instantly brought attacking options. Wenger decided to employ a three striker system and the pressue was turning in Arsenal's favour.

Nasri scored a fine goal in the 82' minute from some nice work from Bendtner and Van Persie. Van Persie recieved the ball just outside the 18 yard box and drew three Hull defenders towards him. He slid it on the ground towards Nasri on the left and the Frenchmen cooly slotted the finish to the far corner.

Just 4 minutes later Bendtner sealed the game with some nice inter-play between himself and Van Persie. Persie was marginally offside when he recieved the pass but the flag was not raised and he played a square ball to Bendtner, who finished it strong. Bendtner has fully grasped the role of super-sub for the team which we need now considering the lack of craft we are playing with. Song came on, but frankly I dont care about him at all.

The last few minutes were very nervy as Hull tried to score and looked close to doing so. Arsenal held firm and escaped with a 3-1 victory. Arsenal had 62% of possession throughout the game which lead to 14 goal attempts; 7 on target. Hull had 7 attempts on goal and 2 hit the target.

The Gunners had a very tough time recently grinding out results and some reinforcements are needed to be purchased in this transfer window if we want a chance of competiting for the FA cup and securing a champions league spot.

You can catch all of the goals at Arsenalist's, thanks mate!