ARSENAL 2
FULHAM 0
LONDON // Not for the first time this season, Arsenal laboured for much of the game, the first half in particular. And not for the first time this season, they found an extra gear, a surge of 15-20 minutes in which they raised the tempo and put their opponents under pressure, doing enough to win a game that in previous seasons you suspect may have drifted to a stalemate.
“We were in control defensively for 90 minutes,” said Arsene Wenger, the Arsenal manager, “but a bit one-paced in the first half with our passing. These kind of games against teams who fight not to go down are very difficult.”
It was Santi Cazorla who got both goals, a welcome return to incisiveness for a player who has taken something of a back seat to Mesut Ozil this season. After scoring 12 goals and registering 11 assists last season, this term he had scored only one and assisted two, before his double strike yesterday.
Much of the reason for that is that the Spaniard's game has had to change to accomodate Ozil's arrival. He has also suffered a number of injuries, but it clearly helps Arsenal's title hopes to have goals coming from across their midfield.
“Only recently, since mid-December, has he [Cazorla] come back to his level,” Wenger said. “When you play in the final third, he’s one of those players who can create something special.”
Wenger has been strongly linked with the Juventus forward Mirko Vucinic during this winter transfer window, who would offer options across the line of three and could cover for Oliver Giroud at centre-forward if needed, but Wenger denied any particular interest, and seemed amused by claims that Vucinic's agent had been seen at Emirates Stadium. "Some people," he said, "have visual capacities I don't have."
The first was a classic Arsenal goal, the result of the sort of rat-a-tat of passes of which no other side in the Premier League is capable. If it was not quite as breathtaking as Olivier Giroud’s goal against Norwich City, that was only because that was an almost otherworldly skein of passing. This was marginally more prosaic, the ball pinging from Nacho Monreal to Cazorla to Giroud and then to Jack Wilshere, who cleverly cut the ball square for Cazorla to sweep in after 57 minutes.
“It was a typical sort of Arsenal goal,” said Rene Meulensteen, the Fulham manager. “We worked hard this week in making sure we stayed with the runners rather than following the ball and that’s what happened.”
Five minutes later Cazorla added a second, seizing on a half-cleared cross and hitting a low shot just beyond the grasp of Maarten Stekelenburg. The Dutch goalkeeper’s return to the starting XI was one of a number of positives for Fulham, the pick of a number of fine saves behind his stretching dive to his right to turn a Lukas Podolski shot against the post.
“You must always make sure you see the result and the performances,” said Meuelensteen. “A lot of our performances have been very good but we haven’t got out of it what we should. Today was a really good defensive performance, in contrast to what we’ve been doing which is looking good going forward but conceding soft goals. The spirit is very, very good; there’s plenty of quality in there.”
Certainly Fulham were more impressive than they had been in losing 4-1 to Sunderland last week, the central defensive pairing of Brede Hangeland, back after injury, and the 21-year-old debutant Dan Burn, who has been on loan at Birmingham City, looked far more assured than Philippe Senderos and Fernando Amorebieta.
Arsenal, meanwhile, roll on. They may be yet to produce a truly definitive performance against one of their title rivals, but against the mid-ranking clubs and below they are remorseless.
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