[Archived] Rovers 0 Arsenal 2

[Bobby G]

He should have done a diving header for the second chance a la the first match at the Emirates Stadium.

Sparky has conceded that we pretty much never got going and didnt deserve anything and that the red card hurt us more.

[AggyBlue]

What a shocking performance from the Rovers in an awful match. I hate playing L'Arse, it's just like watching Bolton - to an extent. They're cynical cheats who con the ref and look to gain an unfair advantage at every turn.

My thoughts exactly.

I've just got home and have a very bad taste in my mouth.

Why does such a talented team have to put on a display like that?

Why do the referee's always fall for these type of antics?

What was that German pr!ck doing in the BBE near the end? Why didn't someone stick one on him?

[Presty On Tour]

the bottom line is we lost because they took their chances and we didn't.

it has to be said our defending for both of their goals was nothing short of school boy.

arsenal down to 10 men early, we really should of got something out of the game but we failed to create and when arsenal took the lead it was always going to be an up hill battle.

[SIMON GARNERS 194]

Rovers not at the races tonight....you cant win 'em all folks.Credit to Arsenal,you would have never known they were playing with 10 men,a sign of real quality.Poor atmosphere from the home crowd too.

MOKOENA?......IN THE NAME OF GOD PLEASE SEND HIM TO BURNLEY!!

[Eddie]

They played well, but we missed our chances. Arsenal only really had 4 chances, we had 4 or 5. Derbyshire take a bow, he simply isn't a good enough finisher to be a striker at this level. He's scored two sitters and missed 3 in recent weeks and that simply isn't good enough. We weren't great today, but if you don't take your chances then you'll never win. We could have taken the lead, we could have equalised and then we could have given ourselves hope, we didn't do anything.

[jim mk2]

As a spectacle, the game was ruined by the sending off.

Eh ? Didn't ruin the spectable for Arsenal .

[Jordan]

3rd - The axe has chopped his final piece of wood because he was a let down tonight, falling over the ball giving daft fouls away just an aboslute joke!

Disagree with most of your post but I thought the above quote was a corker.

We lost two-nil to the best footballing team in England. One goal was a cracker and the other was bad defending other than that I thought we looked the better team, granted we had a one man advantage but they had the refferee.

[Paul]

I've left Ewood feeling disgusted tonight, not because of the result but because of the "football" I've seen. Rovers were awful, simply awful. No drive, no motivation, no pace, no ability to stretch Arsenal who never looked as though they played with ten men for 75 minutes...........

............but all of that I've seen before and can put up with, it's just part of following the Rovers. We know it happens.

What has truely disgusted me is the Arsenal. This is a team full of real talent, capable of fabulous football and what did we see? A team of cheating, cynical, time-wasting players. I'm so angry with what we saw tonight - Fabregas and Lehmans take the prize - that right now I don't want to see another PL game. If this is modern football you can shove it. We can at least be proud our team tried to stand up in the tackle, stayed on their feet when an Arsenal player would have gone down, but that's all. This was an appalling game, I used to enjoy watching Arsenal, they could play, but this team are the pits, they represent eveything that is wrong with the PL and all its foreign imports.

Henry score one of the finest goals you'll see, don't miss MOTD.

Yours,

Disgusted of Chorley

[WaffleWag]

frist goal was ###### marking.. only one arsenal player what the hell? we had some great chanses derb should have score atleast one, but savage and nonda both had geat chanses too. the last goal was great taken by henry, i felt i wasnt deserved but thats football. The red crad a little harsh but it was a stupid kick by gilberto, but i felt the ref went against us after that, every 50-50 tackle went to arsenal it was stupid. and tugay should have started. enyo the night folks!

[RoversFanUSA]

Well seeing as i havent been home yet to see the game i have to say that over all im pleased with the way things turned out. It wasnt a 6-2 lose but a rather smaller margin. Also from reading some of the other posts derbyshire missed a couple of sitters that should have put us up. Now i have to say that id much rather lose to a top 4 team like the gunners then to a bottem of the table team like Watford. Mabye they won and we didnt cash in on our chances but like SIMON GARNERS 194 "you cant win them all". We have to think that so what we lost, we have won our last four at home and away and you have to admit thats pretty damn good!!

[Exiled in Toronto]

Let's face it, we lost not because of Derbyshire but because they had better quality all over the park. To beat any of the top teams we need them to have an off day, and Arsenal didn't.

I thought they were good in the tackle and I was particularly impressed by how virtually every player was comfortable taking men on, which is why we didn't benefit from the extra man as they constantly took our players out of the game. We didn't take anyone on ands thus always had 10 men in front of us, and while Emerton was on the wing they we didn't have an extra man anyway. I also like the way Lehman completely dominates his area.

Fair result.

[AxesFirstTouch]

Rovers not at the races tonight....you cant win 'em all folks.Credit to Arsenal,you would have never known they were playing with 10 men,a sign of real quality.Poor atmosphere from the home crowd too.

MOKOENA?......IN THE NAME OF GOD PLEASE SEND HIM TO BURNLEY!!

The worrying thing is that playing Arsenal it is a absolute must not to lose the ball in the middle of the park due to the excellent counter attack play. Yet Hughes starts Mokoena who has the worst first touch at the club, and give Arsenal the ball in the middle of the park like today and they punish you. Why on earth did Hughes start with the 'Axe' to Arsenal, fair enough against Watford,Wigan etc.. they will not punish sloppiness in the middle of the park, his performances also seem to be getting worse each match now.

To the people at the match, are the fans starting to back on Axe's back after each poor touch now? I could hear a few boo's on TV after the axe made a mistake, maybe it was at the Arsenal players....

Robbie picked up his 9th booking today, another 1 and he's suspended correct? Midfield is looking desperate now.

It'll be interesting to hear Rovers6 take on the Axe situation now.

Positives -MGP was decent again when giving the chance,Lucas improved second half and Brett was good on the RW

[SIMON GARNERS 194]

Did anyone else notice the mixture of young fans(sadly mostly Arsenal) in the left hand bottom half of the Darwen end today?

I hope this wasn't LOCAL schools!

[cn174]

Did anyone else notice the mixture of young fans(sadly mostly Arsenal) in the left hand bottom half of the Darwen end today?

I hope this wasn't LOCAL schools!

Was talking to the family stand steward before and there were 1300 kids from Ireland (cant remember where now) in the Darwen End.

There was a strange mix of people in the family stand, appeared to be quite a lot of people who were a little confused as to if they were supporting Rovers or Arsenal, don't know if there was some school initiative on or something. It was pretty full up there in any event

[Paul Mellelieu]

A game, with the chances we had, that we should have won. Three chances - actually once chance - two goals.

The Axe didn't do much wrong, but Hughes did. Should have left Emerton at right wing and subbed Derbyshire who looked poor today.

[brfc_jonesy]

i thought when derbyshire wasnt too bad except for the misses, i dont think hes quite ready for the first team but he wasnt as bad as some of the players. i thought mokoena was clumsy kept falling over the ball, and i thought emerton was a waste of space, he tries all these flick on and that but he aint good enough to pull them off, i thought henchoz was a rock at the back though

[roversmum]

I've left Ewood feeling disgusted tonight, not because of the result but because of the "football" I've seen. Rovers were awful, simply awful. No drive, no motivation, no pace, no ability to stretch Arsenal who never looked as though they played with ten men for 75 minutes...........

............but all of that I've seen before and can put up with, it's just part of following the Rovers. We know it happens.

What has truely disgusted me is the Arsenal. This is a team full of real talent, capable of fabulous football and what did we see? A team of cheating, cynical, time-wasting players. I'm so angry with what we saw tonight - Fabregas and Lehmans take the prize - that right now I don't want to see another PL game. If this is modern football you can shove it. We can at least be proud our team tried to stand up in the tackle, stayed on their feet when an Arsenal player would have gone down, but that's all. This was an appalling game, I used to enjoy watching Arsenal, they could play, but this team are the pits, they represent eveything that is wrong with the PL and all its foreign imports.

Henry score one of the finest goals you'll see, don't miss MOTD.

Yours,

Disgusted of Chorley

I didn't feel disgusted, Paul, just very, very sad and rather angry. Arsenal's talent cannot be denied and I don't understand why they feel the need to cheat. It surely must be encouraged by their management and needs to be stopped. Just watching Sky News and they even wheeled Fabregas (?) out with a huge bandage on his ankle - oh, please. Did anyone notice the assistant refs - more than once waving their flags for a foul on Rovers or a throw in for Rovers then changing their minds when the Arsenal fans howled and the referee went against them for some Rovers favoured decisions. Poor do by the officials which didn't help.

[Eddie]

i thought when derbyshire wasnt too bad except for the misses, i dont think hes quite ready for the first team but he wasnt as bad as some of the players. i thought mokoena was clumsy kept falling over the ball, and i thought emerton was a waste of space, he tries all these flick on and that but he aint good enough to pull them off, i thought henchoz was a rock at the back though

I thought that Emerton was one of our better players. Henchoz was great apart from the fact that he did nothing for the first goal. Overall we did well, except at the crucial times. We missed our chances and defended poorly when they scored (although they were two good goals).

[Oklahoma]

I was quite disapointed with the team today.

We should and could have done better.

Our defence was clueless in both goals.

First, Ooijer gave a lot of space to Toure and allowed him to jump alone. Very poor defending.

Second goal was even worse. A smart defender wouldn't allow Henry to make that move. He was allowed to cruise around our defense and no one tried to steal the ball from him.

What is terrible is that we could have won this game if we didn't make mistakes in the defense and had taken one of our opportunities to score.

[Eddie]

We could have won this game EVEN if we had made those defensive mistakes and taken our opportunity to score. It was a depressing defeat but not many sides will create that many good goalscoring chances against an in-form Arsenal.

[Quack]

Rovers were clueless, witless and useless today. The defence froze at the free kick and why could 3 Rovers players not prevent Henry passing to Flabiglass?? Admittedly the goal was worth seeing and I thought the applause for Henry when he was subbed showed that Rovers fans do recognise genius when we see it.

Lehmann and his antics were simply disgusting, why do they do it? I wish I understood.

The Family Stand was jam packed with children from local football clubs - many were wearing MUFC / Arsenal / Chelsae shirts!

[BRFC4EVA]

Does anybody else find Henry's goal overrated? Im not trying to say that it wasnt a superb goal, it was a excellent counter attack and finish, but goal of the season? It was from inside of the box and Brad got a BIG hand to it and imo should have kept it out. We could also do without the patronizing motd commentry, 'Brad didnt get anywhere near that'. WTF?? The guy got his hand to the ball ffs how far away from it is he meana be?

[emglch]

Hopefully, the winning phenomenom continues whenever we lose to the gunners. another winning streak please

[Jan]

Apparently Toddy hurt his groin- broke down on Thursday. I think it's true because if he's been dropped he probably wouldn't have been sitting about 6 rows behind Hughesy, with a hot cup of tea in his hand and NOT thrown it!!

[Blueboy Downunder]

totally inept and void of any common sense when playing against ten men. we also showed once again that we have no idea.