English Premier League - Game 38 - Arsenal (Home)
Man City host West Ham, and are in pole position to finish 3rd and avoid the playoffs. If they drop points and we better their result, or we win by 5 goals more than they do (or lose by 5 less), we will finish higher. Difficult to see considering our opponents are Arsenal, but we will see what happens.
In the 6th minute, Santi Cazorla of all people sent a header from the edge of the area into the top corner off a corner. It looked like Forster could have perhaps reacted faster.
A minute later Rodriguez went on a great run into the box but Cech stuck out a hand to turn his shot around the post.
In the 10th minute, Cazorla had a second, as Bertrand’s excellent slide tackle on Walcott fell kindly for the Spaniard, who fired into the open goal.
In the 16th minute we were three behind as they countered from a corner, Walcott half-volleying home superbly from Sanchez’s cross.
In the 20th minute Cazares was forced off by injury. With the result virtually decided already, Gitschier was his replacement.
In the 24th minute a lazy foul from Tadic gave Arsenal a penalty, and Cazorla a hat trick.
In the 34th minute Tadic skipped past Bellerin and fired in a perfect cross for Ramirez, who smashed it goalwards. Cech got a piece of it, and it hit the inside of the post and bounced on the line, before being cleared.
Walcott made it 5 twenty seconds into the second half, as my hairdryer treatment of the players apparently failed to have any effect.
In the 48th minute Gitschier put a cross into the box, and Rodriguez found the far corner to give us a little bit of respectability.
In the 50th minute Dario Rodriguez and Palombo replaced Tadic and Davis.
A minute later the two combined, Palombo sending a sensational lofted pass to the far post, but young Rodriguez hit the post, before being denied by Cech from the rebound.
When Oxlade-Chamberlain came on in the 64th minute I just knew he’d score, and sure enough, two minutes later a terrible missed header from Van Dijk saw the ball sprayed wide to him, where he cut inside Cedric with ease and fired straight through Forster into the net.
Walcott sealed his hat trick shortly afterwards after we continued to gift them the ball back.
Oxlade-Chamberlain had two on 70 minutes with a far post volley from Bellerin’s cross.
Jay Rodriguez’s 77th minute cross was kept alive by Dario Rodriguez and cut back to Gitschier, who was denied a goal by a desperate block from Chambers.
Two minutes later Gitschier hit the post after Ramirez chested the ball down for him from Jay Rodriguez’s chipped pass. Really not our day!
Ramirez almost scored in the 88th minute after a great team move and pass from Gitschier, but a full stretch Cech tipped it around the post.
That was truly appalling. You would have thought it would be Arsenal who were half asleep, considering the score of the match would make not the slightest difference to them, but it wasn’t. To be fair, Arsenal scored of every single chance they had, whilst we found ourselves denied a few times by goalkeeping and the woodwork, butI can honestly say I’ve never had a worse result in an FM match ever! Quite funny actually, but anyway, more changes might be needed this off-season than I thought!
Sadly, West Ham were just 14 goals shy of beating Man City 14-2 and bumping us up to third place.
POM: Theo Walcott (Arsenal - 9.7, 3G, 1A)
Best Southampton Player: Jay Rodriguez (7.0, 1G, 0A)