Arsenal going forward with too many players leaving them vulnerable on the counter. Aguero in a one on one with Cech and he lifted the ball over Cech. 0-1 for Man City.
Arsenal trying to go for it now and Monreal with the equaliser after a cross from the right and Monreal with a shot in one time with this right foot. 1-1 after 72 minutes.
A few minutes of breathing time followed for both teams. Arsenal leaning back a bit after the chase and Man City a bit more in the attack. One of those attacks ended with a volley from Touré that was pushed against the goalpost by Cech. Özil almost away but he was looking for his left foot for the shot and was stopped. City with a corner and Fernadinho with the header against the crossbar.
After 82 minutes Welbeck came on for Giroud. Welbeck going past Otamendi and then his shot to the far post almost shaving the post. That was close. City with some dangerous infiltrations but Gabriel and Koscielny could clear the ball. Alexis trying to start a corner and fouled by De Bruyne who got a yellow card for his foul. The match could go either way in the final minutes. But Gabriel with some excellent defending on Sane preventing him from getting the shot. After 90 minutes and 3 extra minutes the score remained 1-1.
A typical Arsenal semi final. Going behind, coming back and then in to extra time.
Not much chances in the opening minutes. Welbeck not finding a team mate and then the cross from Alexis being cleared for a corner. Holding heads the corner just over the crossbar. Arsenal get a free kick when Kompany pulls Welbeck down. Özil with the free kick to Koscielny who heads it in front of the goal again to Welbeck who misses his shot but the ball falls for Alexis and he smashes it over the line. GOAL !!!! 2-1 for Arsenal after 100 minutes.
Toure gets a yellow card for dissent. When the Ox gets a cramp City plays on and Holding with an important block for a corner. A bit of frustration when Delph reacts after an offside foul against Sane. In the last minute of the first period of half time Bellerin comes on for The Ox who had just suffered from cramps. In the last seconds of the extra time Özil crosses to Welbeck who heads just wide from close range… oohhh that could have been the final decision… Arsenal still lead 2-1 after 105 minutes.
Man City of course looking for the equaliser and Arsenal more defending. City with a free kick but the Arsenal wall smothered the danger. De Bruyne with a ball to Delph but a good block from Bellerin puts the ball just wide. Welbeck with a steal but he can’t get past the last defender Kompany after a long run on the flank. De Bruye with a low shot that went just wide. Otamendi gets a yellow card for a kick from behind on Ramsey. Alexis and Özil try to counter but good defending from City. Özil then again in the City penalty area going down but no foul according to the ref. Touré curls a ball wide.
Coquelin come on after 118 minutes for Özil who looked exhausted. Bellerin almost sends Welbeck away but the control was missed. And then the ref blows the end of the match! Arsenal go to the FA Cup Final!!!! Arsenal win 2-1!!!
Great win, and FA Cup is certainly a real trophy!
And we get good press.
Mail,Guardian,Telegraph & Independant all gave us very good reveiws with the Mail almost breaking records with marks out of ten for our players.
Nobody suggested our win was undeserved. In fact all praised our resilience and hard tackling even (in one paper). I think at least two of them noted that it was a success for our new formation with both wing backs involved in the first goal.
What a fuss the media make when Arsenal are the beneficiaries of a wrong call. We won’t hear the last of Man City’s disallowed goal for several days. Talk Sport will devote hours of air time telling all their flock of sheep listeners how lucky we were.
I don’t remember much fuss from the very same media when we were refused three blatant penalties in the Hull cup final win.
Hope we can give Mr wenger the FA cup as a farewell…he lads gave their all…my MOTM goes to Gabriel
MickHazel
That’ll be more work for the video ref in next season’s FA cup. Can’t come soon enough IMO.
Fantastic team performance, something that has been missing for a while now. Let’s get the top four and the FA Cup lads. Coyg
Great performance from the team and it was a pleasure to see
Arsene Wenger’s reaction after the final whistle, before he straightened his face to go and shake Pep’s hand.
This run of bad results faced Arsene Wenger with an unprecedented problem to solve and he has found a solution. Whatever he decides to do next match, let’s hope this has boosted our players for a good run in to the end of the season.
Of the current PGMO Select List referees the following have already refereed a cup final and so won’t be appointed this year:-
Mike Dean (2008), Martin Atkinson (2011), Andre Marriner (2013), Lee Probert (2014), Jonathan Moss (2015) and Mark Clattenberg (2016).
As Craig Pawson were the referee for our semi-finals I would doubt that he would get the final.
Take your pick from the rest – my bets in descending order of probability are :-
Anthony Taylor, Robert Madley, Neil Swarbrick, Lee Mason, Mike Jones and Kevin Friend. The other Select Group referees have all done 10 PL games or fewer and so are extremely unlikely to be. Awarded a once in a lifetime opportunity this year.
My preference would be anyone but Anthony Taylor
Well done to the players. Fantastic win, the kind that makes you proud… and how did this win come? Did Arsenal suddenly spend 500 mil in the transfer market. This is why I have never felt that the rivals spending more money is a justification for not challenging for the league and the club’s dismal show in the UCL. Money is only a very small part of the dynamics. There is still plenty of room to just outwork and outfight your opponents, regardless of how much each of them cost.
Outwork and outfight City was exactly what the Arsenal players did. They chased down every loose ball and just refused to lose, especially after City took the lead. They just wanted it more. Shame Wenger has not been able to inspire such a performance consistently through the entire course of the season. However now is not the time to focus on past failures, and what could have beens.
Even now in the 8 games that remain if the team puts in a shift like today then UCL and a trophy will follow. The team mustn’t need to get complacent and keep up the standards. If the team showed such commitment and fight and desire in every game, then no team on the planet would be able to stop them.
Football management is easy when your winning you earn your money when things don’t go according to plan
Prior to this semi final Arsene had never experienced a run of results we have just had and to his credit he put things right in the face of unprecedented criticism , he don’t know what his doing , the players are not playing for him and his lost the dressing room etc etc
He got the team to dig deep show there class and most of all got a result for him and themselves
Well done Arsenal and Arsene COYG
A great result & also impressed by the manner in which we played.
well done The Arsenal! Poor pep, no gundogan..no aguero… no silva…no hart.. poor poor city. well done gabriel and holding. and thanks arsene for another randezvous with historic records.
MickHazel,
Or contrast that with when the same City side beat us earlier this season via 2 offside goals. But yes, it’s Arsenal who benefited so let’s bash them.. that’s the media for you.
That decision by the linesman was probably the best example of where without the benefit of replays it’s impossible to see in realtime. So can’t fault the man. I thought he made a great call, the ball was mere milimetres from clearing the goalline. That he got the decision wrong by the smallest of margins is remarkable, considering officials have missed offsides that are a yard or two. I thought he did very well on that occasion.
The press has the wrong idea.
I have no doubt that for just about any given game, you can find a situation where an official made a mistake that hurt the more popular team in the game. What has shown up in the referee reviews is that so many mistakes are being made, it would be unusual to not be able to find a situation such as that.
What the press needs to work on, is that these games don’t have one mistake or two mistakes; these games have twenty mistakes or thirty mistakes.
Once the press clues into that, then a person can look at just who benefits from all these mistakes. Because as has been shown here this year, it does not all even out at the end.
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I hope Tony and other Untold’ers didn’t get caught up in the rioting at Wembley.
Back home. What a great day out.
This is what football is all about. The win that no one expected and which we got.
It was great.
I see the usual negative reactions from familiar sources.
We won! Get over it!
Happy Gooner spamming incommmminnnnnngggg.
Yeeeeessssssssss!!!!! Yeeeessssssss!!! Yesssssss!!
Carry on. 🙂
Andrew http://untold-arsenal.com/archives/61224#comment-915301
Especially because the press is now reporting that the players want to win the FA Cup for Wenger, I will suggest that we either get Taylor, or the PGMO breaks with tradition and makes Atkinson the first referee to do two FA Cup finals.
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I think we are going to be too busy to worry about it. We have a lot of games to make up, and not much time. Leicester on Wednesday?
The most annoying part of this semi final is the constant media harping on Wenger & when will he retire. I just wish he would tell them in good old fashioned English to go & play in the traffic.
I was quite amazed by the gentle tilting but generally careful avoiding of blatant wrong calls. The ball called by Child as going out of play was excellent because it was close enough to being out. For Gods sake a ball that went 3 feet into the goal was not seen by officials so a fraction of an inch is good for human error.
The Aguerro fall in the box was a touch that got him to kick his own heel & fall. It was a close call but not a deliberate trip. The Alexis pull & push was more clear & as an Arsenal supporter I would have given it. There was a lot of fouling by Fernando, Tour & Kompany. How Kompany was not sent off for consistent fouling defeats me. The goal that City scored should have been avoided but perhaps it gave us more reason to focus.
The result is what matters & suddenly the FA cup is not a trophy anymore.
Wenger in his wisdom said that in times of stress you can be divided & then suddenly things change & united you begin to win. Well some Uniteds get assisted wins.
Arsenal are an awesome club with an awesome manager & an awesome squad of players that play beautiful football. It takes honesty to admit it & jealousy to evade this truth.
Hunter, Al & Mick Hazel – I’m with you. My thoughts are that Taylor, Madley or Friend will get the Final. Riley will be in tears tonight. He will be wondering why the clamps on his nuts are so tight. The reason is simple. There are too many losers in the betting ring & some of them have got his gonads in their grip.
The Womens game is being abused by the FA & very little is being done by clubs to fund ‘the whole’ rather than the local team.
I am really angry that the Arsenal Ladies team that won everything one season has never been recognised by the media & the club. It was awesome & still ranks as the best team result in football.
We were waiting for such a performance for a long time and what a time to do it. A fascistic game to watch and our boys in the second half were magnificent.
This match reminds me of a few years ago at City when we won 2 nil.It was considered to be an outstanding team performance then.It was wonderful, when I read the reports that we were too physical today, brilliant.!
Paul the gooner
I don’t know about us being “too physical”, but we certainly roughed City (Silva & Aguero) up a bit at times, and it’s good that we’re developing that edge. Too many teams do that to us & get away with it and we’re now showing that as long as we stay just the right side of the line we can compete on those terms.
Not that I am remotely good at reading people, but I would say (guess?) that Gabriel was one of the happiest players for the result from a couple of pictures I’ve seen.
It was nice to read this was Holding’s first trip to Wembley (ever), and that Nacho’s goal was the first time he scored with his right foot.
Since Pawson and Atkinson did the two semi-finals, they are not expected to do the Final.
My list of potential referees in order of preference, but I am not an expert like Walter:
1-Jones
2-Friend
3-Madley
4-Oliver
5-Mason
6-Swarbrick
7-Taylor
What i’ve realised in life is that:
If you don’t work hard for what you want, you very rarely get what you need.
Good hard work yesterday lads.
On the 7th of May is the big one for me.
Time for a little revenge:
Manu have EL game just before ours(3 days) and just after (3 days).
I remember when we used to have those fast coming games too and usually could not be as good throughout.
This is the time lads to put an end to the ManUs and humiliate them back.
Game before is the Spuds, so we have to take them too.
I’d be happy with anyone but Taylor or Mason. Mason isn’t that biased for me but inept, although I think he did give us a couple big calls early in the season this year.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-dangerous-mental-illness-yale-psychiatrist-conference-us-president-unfit-james-gartner-a7694316.html
Could we get these guys to asses the BIGMOB ?
Ought to quite eye opening !
In spite of the feeble and pathetic efforts to rewrite the internet by this hapless troll for most people who can read and combine that rare skill with the ability to humbly watch a game of simple football, such people would’ve seen the “City were robbed” articles on the likes of the BBC and seen the clear and present bias in the reportage.
The bt editors forced their hapless plundits to attempt (& fail like the above troll) to tell their own in house pgMOB representative, Riley superstar Howard Webb, that he was incorrect to judge the arsenal pelanty appeal as valid and the City appeal as speculative.
Nevermind the hopeless and discredited Bleeb, BT’s coverage is beyond satire!
Comparing the coverage to the Classico post match coverage (Sky), at the least the plundits for that non PL match actually discussed the football match they had just seen, a stark and telling contrast to that witnessed on BT: where there was lots of gibberish but zero discussion of the football match just witnessed. Amazing when you think about it.
You see how everyone is happy when arsenal play the game tough, physical and get the results? Hardly is anyone (even walter)talking about the wrongly disallowed goal. Congratulations to the team, they played like men and not easily pushed over sissies
There should not be a _need_ to play a tough, physical game. Would you have been happier if someone would have had their leg broken as a result of this?
I would be equally happy if we loose yesterday.
You can see the team was playing with high spirit.
Question is why not every game ?
@Gord, but I don’t see you grumbling now you were the one dishing it out
Maybe the ref was a little more even handed than usual
There was no wrongly disallowed goal. There was a correctly judged goal kick for a ball that deviated outside the goal line. All of the ball was over the line but cameras are not lined up to show it. Child the assistant was not on the goal line either but made a good judgement.
There was no even handed officiating but there was an unsuccessful attempt to slant the pitch. The official will probably be punished by Riley who must be pissed off.
Menace can you show me evidence that all the ball was over the line???No didn’t think so. I dont know wether to take you serious and your just an idiot or you come out with pure drivel to get a reaction.Either way you haven’t got a clue about the game of football.
The evidence suggests that the pGMOBs perferred re-written rulebook which has reduced england under Riley from being a team that made the occasional QF or even SF to being a team that can’t beat Iceland or Costa Rica etc…this is all a very strong indicator as to who it is who knows little about football. For those who pay attention to what happens on the football pitch.
All the idiots above asking AFC to be more physical should also grow the footballs required to ask that AFC players not be sent off for example, for the hapless tilting witnessed with both reds against Xhaka this season. Indefensible officiating, I assume this is one reason these genius’ have to make so much continuous effort to ignore what happens on the football pitch. is it too much to ask that they learn to comment on the Football?
Oh, and here we have further evidence of the alleged balanced media. Just don’t mention the obvious non-called pelanty during that first half, whatever you do for pities sake i mean it’s not as if this kind of coverage of AFC is not completely predictable!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39694245
Fortnately as observed with the multitudes holding up their a4 paper at these protests over the many many years that have been so successful for these Groaners and their handlers in the media, most AFC fans are not stupid.
fins fins fins fins !!!!
Hello Hunter me old mukka 🙂
Gabriel’s passing may never be quite as amazing as D.Luiz but that was some performance from a CB. Hope you enjoyed it!
Looking again at the replay of City’s disallowed goal and it appears that the whole of the ball was NOT over the whole of the line so it was a valid goal BUT the assistant disagreed and that is all that matters.
It was a close game but I just saw Adrian Clarke’s assessment of the match and his analysis is spot on. Both teams could have come away winners but AFC’s performance in the second half was magnificent. I am really worried that the PIGMOB will have a strong agenda for the final and that the official will be hand-picked to favour Chelsea. Regardless, it is won on the pitch and AFC can do that, especially at Wembley.
Menace
I do hope it’s Friend that gets it; from the list of possible choices I think he’s the least worrisome for us.
With players like hazard & costa who’re always looking to cheat we’ll need the least biased official, no unbiased officials exist in this league.
Andrew ‘My preference would be anyone but Anthony Taylor’
Riley obviously reads Untold