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MOTD- Arsenal 1-0 West Bromwich Albion

By on May 4, 2014

In early February, when Arsenal were still sitting atop the Premier League, it seemed as if The Gunners could finally win the league again, but after falling all the way down to fourth in recent weeks, and having at some points handed their chance of Champions League football for a seventeenth consecutive season to Everton, simply the club’s usual fourth place spot will provide enough comfort for Arsenal fans.  And although they already sealed that fourth place spot in which they have occupied for seven of the last nine seasons yesterday as Manchester City beat Everton, a win over West Bromwich Albion tonight gave them the pleasure of knowing if it weren’t for their poor goal difference it would be quite possible for them to finish in third place. Yet, as the third position has already been all but sealed by Chelsea, who are eighteen points superior to Arsenal in goal differential, Arsene Wenger’s side can now sit back and relax for their final Premier League match of the season – not that they weren’t obviously already looking ahead to the summer tonight.

With West Brom also having only the slimmest of reasons to play too (the Baggies are all but safe from relegation), the match started at a snail’s pace.  In fact, the pace was to get even slower as Olivier Giroud put gave Arsenal an early lead when the Frenchman fended off the challenge of his marker Craig Dawson to flick a header into the bottom left-hand corner of the goal from a Santi Cazorla corner curled to the near post.  The match was only fourteen minutes old, yet the competitive aspect of it nearly died off with the opener.

Mathieu Flamini almost provided Cazorla with a tap-in in the twenty-fourth minute, only to see Ban Foster kick his cut-back from the left of goal away, and Morgan Amalfitano whipped a screaming effort on goal which Wojciech Szczesny did well to block seven minutes later, but chances were few and far between. Saido Berahino sent a wicked curler inches over the crossbar moments later, before Foster was forced into an excellent save to stop Cazorla from directing Lukas Podolski’s daisy-cutting cross, yet bar those chances there was hardly any more threatening opportunities for either side until the match neared it’s end.

Even then there were only a few clear cut chances; the first came seventy minutes in when Amalfitano found himself through on goal down the left via a wonderful Stéphane Sessègnon through-ball.  But Szczesny came out to smother the chance, four minutes before the post denied Podolski from guiding what would have been a comical second for Arsenal after West Brom had failed to deal with a Mesut Ozil cross from the left.  In the end, though, Arsenal surely knew deep down that the match was un-consequential to their league position and Champions League fourth place spot.
Man of the Match: Santi Cazorla

 

 

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.