Gil's lucky to get a free-kick there. Looked like Giroud won the ball fair and square. We would have been in.
Giroud's hold-up play has been magnificent today, I have to say. He's had to feed off scraps this second half, but he's protected the ball so well to ease the pressure off our defence.
Oxo doing his typical ' skilfully running past three defenders at pace only to fall over or miss-kick'
Good win. Made it a bit tense near the end. I'll put that down to tiredness. Man City next will truly show us what this team is made of.
Any away win in the Premier League is a good win, especially coming off the back of a huge European away game a few days before. A fairly comfortable win in the end. As well as Villa played in the second half, Cech had no saves to make from what I recall.
We looked a bit tired in the second half but villa never really threatened us and I was constantly expecting us to score a third even into the 93rd minute. We are now top of the table with the best GD with Leicester playing Chelsea tomorrow, if they don't win we stay top of the table. I hope we have Sanchez back for the City game. We've had some good results against City in recent years and even in the losses we have always looked like we can score against them. A win in that game and I'll start thinking we have a real chance of winning the league.
Cech has now equalled the all time Clean sheets record. (and he's got another 3-4 years or so at the top level)
Pretty easy win, that. We played ok, but Villa are god awful and deserve to go down, it was the perfect game after our efforts in Greece in midweek. Also the Ramsey Flamini partnership is starting to really develope, which is great news, both have plenty of energy and Ramsey is stating to hit top gear.
This is exactly what we needed with both Coqs and Caz out. If they can stay fit then we should be able to extend a little run.
I saw that Mesut Ozil had another assist today which means he has more than any other player in the league since he went to England.
It's impressive to think that cech now has the joint most clean sheets in the league. Ozil has double the amount of assists than any other player this season, and more assists since he came to England. Girond is our 7th player to score 50 prem goals and only Henry and Wright have done it faster. And he's scored more headed goals than any other player since he arrived in England. We've also got the best away record in the league as well..l
We got the goals first half and decided to sit off (plus Villa went for it) in the 2nd half and though they threatened a few times we dealt with the threats accordingly and saw off the game. Cool, efficient performance and now onto City which is a big big game.
Actually looks like Walcott was onside when he scored that beauty that was disallowed for offside. please log in to view this image
