Arsenal: August Update

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Hi guys, welcome back to my Arsenal story. This is only a short 5 game update as i want to test and see what type of updates suit me most. Remember Cristian Zapata and Edin Dzeko were signed at the end of August so they didn’t play any part in the August games, although Zapata did play a game.

The first game of the season was against Wigan:

New signing Nicolas Otamendi & Simon Vuckevic started the game while Marco Verratti came off the bench. It was a pretty strange game considering the 5 shots on target were all good chances, but a Robin Van Persie corner was headered out to Alex Song by a Wigan defender who shot inside the area and it went in the back of the net! Our man of the match was Simon Vuckevic with a 8.7 rating:

Our next game was against Fiorentina, we had to play them for the Champions League play off game to book our place in the Champions League group stages:

Alex Song was our only goalscorer again! Once again another Robin Van Persie corner but this time he headered the ball in the net. Amazingly, Fiorentina had 2 red cards, both were already booked which resulted into another yellow card. Andrei Arshavin cut inside from the left wing and skipped passed Jonathan Franchi who deliberately fouled him which resulted into a second yellow card. Ricardo Montolivo’s red card was when Fiorentina kicked the ball long, Clichy headered the ball down to Cesc Fabregas who was  clipped and this resulted into Montolivo’s second yellow card. Unfortunately, Gael Clichy suffered a hamstring injury which will keep him out for the next 15 days (4-5 games). Anyway all in all a good performance, everyone played well and they got good ratings as well.

Our next game was against Man City at the Emirates.

Arsenal 0-0 Man City

I haven’t posted the screenshot for this game as it was simply boring! On a positive not, Manuel Almunia made some outstanding saves to keep us in the game.

Our next game saw us go to Italy to play Fiorentina in our second leg.

Unfortunately we lost this game in the last 20minutes! I was very dissapointed. Fiorentina got in behind our defence twice and presented tap ins for Gilardinho and Jovetic. Andrei Arshavin will miss the next 3 European games through suspension. Despite the loss, we still go through on away goals.

After the game, our Champions League group was drawn:

This seems to be a pretty tough group. We will have to overcome Italian giants Inter and Wolfsburg are pretty difficult also…. Our first game will be away to Wolfsburg.

Back to the league, our next game was away to Blackburn:

The game wasn’t as close as it seems, we always had control but couldn’t find the goals. Cesc Fabregas scored from an Andrei Arshavin run down the wing and he crossed the ball back on the ground for Fabregas to tap in. Nicklas Bendtner’s last goal for the club came from another defence splitting pass from Andrei Arshavin which was slotted cooly. El Hadgi Diouf scored a consolation goal for Blackburn but I was really hoping for a clean sheet. Cristian Zapata also made his debut in this game.

That was the last game of August, our four new players were pretty good. Nicolas Otamendi showed signs that he can step in at any time despite this early in his career. Simon Vuckevic has already put in a man of the match performance, he has shown good passing abilities. Cristian Zapata & Marco Verratti have hardly played so they will need extra time to make judgements on them.

Current League Table

We are 3 points of the top of the table Chelsea with a game in hand. It’s too early to say who will challenge with us for the title but i’m sure Chelsea & Man City will be up there!

I also wanted to show you the major transfers that had happened in the first transfer window of my game:

After finishing this post, I feel i will do each post about 2/3 months instead of a single month as it is much easier to do it that way.

Anyway Thanks for reading, It’s not the greatest start but I hope you enjoyed it. Take Care, Sayam.