As a Burnley fan, you’d probably be forgiven for hating Arsenal this season, in both games, they have defended and played superbly, deserved a point at least from both games, and have come away with nothing from either after late, late, controversial goals. Still Sunday’s dramatic win shows our fighting spirit and has given us a huge, positive boost ahead of another crucial set of games, with Chelsea and Liverpool away coming up, we needed that win on Sunday.
In a pretty dire first half, chances were few and far between, and it wasn’t until the second half the game sparked into life. Shkodran Mustafi notched his first Arsenal goal, with a Giroud style bullet header from a corner to put us one up. Granit Xhaka was sent off yet again, then in the last minute, it looked like we’d messed things up for ourselves when Burnley equalised from the penalty spot. Luckily for us, there was plenty of injury time and we were (just) awarded a penalty in the 97th minute, which Alexis Sanchez delicately dinked down the middle to gift us all three points with almost the last kick of the game.
Arsene Wenger is going to be in a heap of trouble for some pushing and shoving of the fourth official, and calling the ref a cheat, a potential touchline ban on the cards then meaning he’ll probably be banned for the Chelsea game now.
We now have a tricky FA Cup game this weekend against Southampton before the midweek visit of Watford at The Emirates, while Chelsea play Liverpool at Anfield. So a win for us, and a defeat for them, could see us just two points behind once we’ve beaten them at Stamford Bridge on the 4th of February 😉 the week after that we entertain Hull (get well soon Ryan Mason) while Chelsea travel to Burnley, so we should be top of the league after that, well as Captain Sensible once said, you gotta have a dream.
Laurent Koscielny said:
“It was hard because we conceded a goal in the 90th minute and we knew we only had seven minutes to win this game, we had one opportunity to get the goal from a penalty and Alexis scored. So 2-1, it’s important for our confidence, to keep our winning run and, with the results of the weekend, it was a massive three points…”