That’s your lot from me. Enjoy the remaining precious few hours of your weekend before the grinding awfulness of daily life returns tomorrow. Night!
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Arsenal will wonder how and why they didn’t win that. They had the chances to well and truly put it away in the first half, but didn’t take them. After Spurs, Manchester United and Leicester all drew this was a chance for them, but they remain fourth.
Another huge chance wasted for Arsenal. People keep asking me if a blip will come - fact is we're already in the midst of it. 2 wins from 7.
— gunnerblog (@gunnerblog) November 29, 2015
Full-time: Norwich 1-1 Arsenal
And it is.
90 mins + 3: Bellerin clips a cross over from the right looking for Giroud...he pulls his head back...but it’s just whipped away from him at the last minute. Probably their last chance...
90 mins + 1: Flamini gives the ball away to Odjidja-Ofoe, but does well to get back and block the shot as the Norwich man approaches the edge of the box.
90 mins: Three minutes of added time. Norwich on the attack...
89 mins: Norwich counter down the right, and a harmless looking ball comes into the area, which Monreal vaguely inexplicably boots behind for a corner.
88 mins: Some Norwich fans do that most amusing thing of hiding the ball when it had gone into the crowd, then when a replacement eventually comes they throw the original ball back. They are five-years-old.
86 mins: Oxlade-Chamberlain puts over a cross from the right, aiming for Campbell, but the forward can’t get to the header, under some pressure from Olsson.
85 mins: Double change for Norwich - Vadis Odjidja-Ofoe and Cameron Jerome replace Hoolahan and Grabban.
84 mins: Oy vey. Bellerin tries to dash down the right, towards the byline, but simply runs it out of play. Comic stuff.
83 mins: Ozil frantically trying to create something for Arsenal. He attempts a shot from way downtown, but it’s quite easily blocked.
80 mins: Bellerin slips it down to Oxlade-Chamberlain on the right, and plays a similar ball across to Olsson’s a minute ago, but like his Arsenal counterpart Bennett does well to clear away from goal.
79 mins: And Norwich should be ahead. A long spell of careful passing ends in Brady playing a brilliant pass in the channel that puts Olsson in on goal coming from the left, but he crosses rather than shooting and Gabriel manages to a) get there first and b) not turn it into his own goal, which would’ve been very easy to do.
78 mins: Not been a good afternoon for Arsenal, this. An uneven performance and injuries to two key players. It could get better, of course. But it also could get worse...
75 mins: Dorrans lines up a shot from way out....and, erm, well, it didn’t go in. We’ll leave it at that. Best for all concerned. Don’t want to embarrass the lad more than is necessary.
74 mins: Crivens. Monreal just neatly clipped a cross to the one area of the Norwich area where there wasn’t an Arsenal forward. Impressive, in some ways.
72 mins: And a change for Arsenal too - Ramsey off, Oxlade-Chamberlain (just back from injury so absolutely nothing can go wrong there) on.
71 mins: From that corner, the ball is knocked down at the far post, falls to Howson who tries a shot on the turn, but it goes over. That’s it for Howson in this game, as he’s replaced by Nathan Redmond.
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70 mins: What a save! A cross comes over from the Norwich left, it misses all the forwards but glances off Mertesacker and looks to be heading towards the corner, but Cech dives to his left and flips it round the post.
68 mins: Incidentally Gooners, if you’re after a reason to get annoyed, here’s what Wenger had to say about Sanchez this week:
Spontaneously, it is not maybe the best moment to rest Sanchez. He had a little hamstring alarm but we will see how he recovers from that.
“I think I take information, especially from medical people who know him and treat him everyday and after that we will look at his overall recovery as well but overall when there are alarming signs we want to make the right decision at the right moment but as long as the guys are in confidence, they score goals. It is always difficult to rest them.”
67 mins: Ramsey scoops the ball from the middle to the right for Bellerin, who lays it off to Ozil then goes for the return pass, but the full-back’s shot was dreadful and into the side netting.
65 mins: In the balance this game. Norwich look just as threatening, if not more so, than their opponents.
63 mins: Brady puts the free-kick into the box which is put behind for a corner. That is half-cleared out to O’Neil, who tries an absolutely absurd shot from way out on the left, and predictably enough it sails way, way over the bar. Alex Neil looks exasperated.
61 mins: Brilliant stuff from Hoolahan, battling out on the left with Arsenal defenders all around him, until one of them - Flamini - fouls him.
60 mins: Sanchez is off, and Joel Campbell is on in his place. Dear, dear, dear.
59 mins: Could be yet more injury woe for Arsenal - Sanchez has gone down in the Norwich box clutching his left hamstring. He was an injury doubt coming into the game, but not sure if that’s the same leg.
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58 mins: Ozil carefully lines the free-kick up...and hits it straight into the wall. That was absolutely trousers.
57 mins: Ramsey powers through the middle but goes down under the challenge of O’Neil. The Norwich skipper claims nothing untoward went on there, but the referee begs to differ and not only gives the free-kick, but books O’Neil too.
55 mins: Giroud has a smart idea in taking a throw early to try playing Ramsey in, but he has little support and can only shank his cross wide as he enters the area.
54 mins: A booking for Cazorla, for a dive as he went over in the vague vicinity of Howson. He laughs. Hopefully the ref said “This is no laughing matter young man.”
53 mins: Good lord, Ruddy has been clownish today. The ball loops into the area, Giroud goes for it and misses but so does the keeper, and it’s put behind for a corner before Ozil can snaffle the loose ball.
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52 mins: It’s Norwich’s turn to waste a period of neat passing with questionable end product: they knock the ball around nicely, feed Wisdom down the right but his ball into the middle is way too long.
51 mins: Arsenal attack with a little more purpose, but Ozil plays in for Giroud, looking for the return pass, but that’s intercepted by Bennett.
50 mins: Arsenal pass the thing around for a good minute, then Ramsey tries to stab a ball through for...someone, but it goes harmlessly through to Ruddy.
47 mins: Cazorla’s back on. Another iffy clearance from Ruddy is helped on by Hoolahan, but Grabban can’t control it and make anything of the chance.
46 mins: And we’re away for the second half. It starts with a collision between O’Neil and Cazorla, one of those where both players were waiting for the ball to come down from the skies, both looking up, and both swung their feet at it. It looked like Cazorla kicked his opponent, but it was completely unintentional, but the Spaniard is the one who looks like he came off worst.
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Brendan Pulsford has been on, correcting me with his ‘facts’: “I have to say, I think the narrative that Arsenal can’t hold onto leads that you’re peddling right now is just inaccurate--Before the West Brom game, Arsenal had won the last 25 games they took the lead in and 37 of the last 38 games they took the lead in. That’s not to say Arsenal can’t implode majestically, but they’re usually very good at taking home the points if they score first.”
Well, this is similar to what Arsenal did against West Brom, the difference being they’re level at the break rather than being behind. Silly Arsenal. Norwich have come back into it in the last few minutes of the half, but they shouldn’t have been allowed to.
23 - Lewis Grabban hasn't lost any of the last 23 games he has scored in (W19 D4). Guarantee.
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) November 29, 2015
Half-time: Norwich 1-1 Arsenal
Peeeeeeeeeeeeep.
45 mins + 2: Ooof! Norwich should be ahead. Wisdom does excellent work down the right and fires over a cross betwixt defence and keeper, Hoolahan gets there at the back post and despite being utterly free, he fires his shot over the bar.
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45 mins: Norwich looking for another one, as Hoolahan tries to tuck another pass through, but this time it’s intercepted by Monreal. Arsenal probably should be two or three up, but they’re level. Arsenal.
GOAL! Norwich 1-1 Arsenal (Grabban 43)
Well, I did say. Brady creates some space on the left side of the box and feeds it in to Grabban, who turns Gabriel far too easily then neatly tucks his finish into the corner of the box. Lovely goal, poor defending.
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42 mins: A shot on target for Norwich, such as it is, as Brady fires one but Cech pushes it away.
40 mins: Absolutely no idea why Bennett hasn’t been booked, there. Sanchez had followed a ball just out of play, then for no apparent reason Bennett shoved him into a camera pit.
Could’ve been nasty, that, but the referee does nothing. Particularly when you remember this, from a couple of years ago:
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39 mins: Norwich have a half claim for a penalty, after Flamini seems to barge Hoolahan over just inside the box. At the other end, Ozil chases a ball to the byline, attempts a backheel to keep the ball in play but falls over into some photographers.
Which feels like an opportune moment to publish this email from Andrew Hurley:
“Ozil has been an absolute dream to watch this season. Whilst (unfortunately) goals are what make people talk about players, it is his control of the game, his ability to see and weight passes others cannot that separates him from others. His lazy style is deceptive: he is usually in the top 2/3 Arsenal players in terms of miles run. There are very few Arsenal players now who have a claim to get into the Invincibles team, but he is one: mesmerising.”
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36 mins: Thing is, anyone who has watched Arsenal play like this before knows that they need at least one, ideally two or three more goals to make something of their cartoon dominance, or else they’ll do something daft or lose concentration at some point in the second half.
35 mins: Arsenal are in ‘Olé’ mode already. A solid minute of passing ends with Ramsey collecting the ball on the edge of the area, spinning and shooting but it’s deflected wide.
33 mins: Wenger and Steve Bould are having a lovely laugh on the bench. The Arsenal fans launch into that ‘Big friendly German’ chant of theirs. Pretty sure they’re the words.
Meanwhile...
@NickMiller79 Bad kits: Surely top(?) of the list is QPR’s utterly pointless 89/90 never worn 3rd kit? (Left one) pic.twitter.com/ifGFRUZtIu
— Clonye Worst (@clonmacart) November 29, 2015
31 mins: Norwich try to get back into things straight away, but a deep cross to the back post looking for Hoolahan is too deep, and it sails out of play. They’ve been second best by quite some distance so far.
GOAL! Norwich 0-1 Arsenal (Ozil 30)
A clanger, dropped. Ruddy dithers over a clearance, it reaches O’Neil who is swiftly dispossessed by Sanchez, the Chilean rapidly then slips it through to Ozil who gently lifts the ball over Ruddy and into the corner.
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29 mins: Another chance for Arsenal, as Sanchez plays to Ramsey on the edge of the box, who then lays it back and across to Cazorla, but he leans back slightly and his left-footed shot goes over.
27 mins: Arsenal should be ahead. The quickest feet you ever did see allows Cazorla to dance around a few challenges in the middle, he spreads it to the right side of the area to Sanchez who finds himself in some space, but his shot is straight at Ruddy who batters it away.
26 mins: “Dre! Feet!” shouts Ryan Bennett at Andre Wisdom as Norwich defend a throw. Those effects mics are very, erm, effective.
23 mins: Sanchez plays a beautiful pass between two defenders, slipping the ball through for Ramsey, but his cross/shot hits a defender then rebounds off him and goes out for a goal-kick.
22 mins: Brady nearly sniffs out a chance for himself near the edge of the box, but Mertesacker gets across well then feeds to Bellerin on the right. Olsson sticks his not inconsiderable frame in the way, and that’s that attack done with.
20 mins: It is, according to a meteorological term, ‘bloody windy’ out there, as a Cech clearance is held up by the bluster.
19 mins: Big chance for Arsenal, who seem to be having some luck down the left. Monreal dashes along that flank and half-volleys a cross to the near post, where Giroud is unmarked but puts his shot wide. Shoddy that, from the Frenchman.
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18 mins: O’Neil is OK. That’s Gary O’Neil, by the way. Captaining a team in 2015. What a world.
17 mins: Oh! But there’s something. Some neat passing finds Monreal on the left, he slips it into the box for Sanchez, who turns it towards goal but it’s deflected wide. It might not have been going in, but a corner nonetheless. From the resultant corner Ruddy comes out, flaps but gets away with it, then from the second cross O’Neil and Andre Wisdom clash heads, the latter needing treatment.
16 mins: Not a great deal has happened so far, but these two will have to go some to beat the second half of Tottenham v Chelsea in the tedium stakes. Sweet fancy Moses that was dull.
In terms of journey time to game time, Koscielny made it as far as Thetford Forest.
— Duncan Alexander (@oilysailor) November 29, 2015
14 mins: “Speaking of third strips, do you (or any of your readers) happen to know if Norwich have worn their (Brady Bunch homage) third strip in a competitive match yet?” asks Harry Tuttle. “I think this might be the first instance of an alternative kit sharing almost entirely the same colour scheme with an (already fairly unique) home strip, although the Guardian’s pre-season guide to Premier League football kits assures me it is “totally now”.
Norwich have a free-kick out on the left that Robbie Brady swings over to the back post, but Gabriel is there to head it away.
13 mins: The pitchside effects mic is picking up Alex Neil’s ‘encouragement’ from the dugout. He is very Scottish, isn’t he?
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11 mins: Norwich try to take advantage of their man, erm, advantage. Hoolahan crosses in, but the attack dies when Sanchez is fouled on the edge of his own box. Meanwhile, Gabriel finally comes on for Koscielny.
9 mins: Play continues but Koscielny is limping around the pitch, and Gabriel will be on shortly. Wenger was particularly cautious about saying their injury problems had cleared up...
8 mins: Koscielny looks in a bad way. Tough to see him carrying on here. Meanwhile, here’s Charles Antaki on Kitgate:
“Arsenal must be in thrall to Puma - either the pay is too good to pass up, or Puma have some more than usually compromising photos locked in a safe somewhere. An abomination. And it was directly to blame for the loss in Zagreb (that, and some rank bad play, admittedly).”
7 mins: Problems for Arsenal - Koscielny nips in for a pass ahead of Grabban, but seems to have done something unfortunate to his hip or side. He looks in quite a bit of pain.
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5 mins: In a minute Flamini makes an excellent tackle then splendid interception that makes a minor mockery of any fool who said he wasn’t good enough. Dunno who’d be daft enough to say that...
4 mins: Oooh, there’s something. Laurent Koscielny brings the ball forward untroubled, then slips it to Alexis Sanchez who spins around and shoots low, but it skips just wide of the near post.
3 mins: The most interesting things about the opening three minutes are John Ruddy’s bright pink socks. Other than that, quite a bit of passing around.
1 min: And we’re away. Think they’ve changed the camera angle slightly at Carrow Road. Might take me a while to get used to this.
And Arsenal are wearing that horrible dark blue kit...for some reason.
So Arsenal eschew red and white kit with no colour clash v Norwich to 'air' their abomination of a third kit. Grrr. #AgainstModernFootball
— Amy Lawrence (@amylawrence71) November 29, 2015
As an aside, this is Lewis Grabban’s first league start since this happened...
The teams are emerging from the tunnel. Both sets of players are wearing, in their own way, very ugly tracksuit tops.
“We are a bit cautious when you start to talk about that,” says Arsene Wenger when Geoff Shreeves asks him if his injury problems are starting to clear up.
Well, quite.
Here’s what John Ashdown had to say about this game in our ‘Ten things to look out for this weekend’:
6) Canaries short of sausage rolls and big scalps
It is illustrative of how comfortable Norwich feel about life back in the Premier League that their AGM this week finished with complaints about long waits for food in Carrow Road’s Jarrold Stand (“If I could come down and give you a sausage roll myself, I would,” Delia Smith told the meeting. “We will investigate it”). They may have won only three times in the league all season and only once in their past eight games but there remains an air of quiet confidence in East Anglia. They are, though, yet to win against a team in the top half – two draws and four defeats thus far – so the visit of an Arsenal side weakened by a glut of injuries offers an opportunity to remove that particular monkey from their backs. Alex Neil – for whom, it is easy to forget, this will be just a 42nd match in charge of Norwich – has ditched his attacking style of late and adopted a more cagey approach. It has not quite worked against Manchester City or Chelsea in the past few weeks – but will it work against the Gunners? And will those sausage rolls be ready on time?
A spot of schadenfreude for you Gooners out there. Would recommend turning the sound on for this one...
I could watch Cesc Fabregas in a Chelsea shirt, all day... pic.twitter.com/efGJ1NRTz1
— TerryAFC (@TerryAFCx) November 29, 2015
Get a load of this...
Carlton Cole with an absolute screamer pic.twitter.com/jOHyVeZrSV
— Wellsyyyy (@JoshGFCKeeble) November 29, 2015
The Teams
Norwich City
Ruddy; Wisdom, Bennett, Bassong, Olsson; Howson, Dorrans, O’Neil, Brady; Hoolahan; Grabban. Subs: Rudd, Martin, Mbokani, Jerome, Mulumbu, Redmond, Odjidja.
Arsenal
Cech; Bellerin, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Monreal; Flamini, Cazorla; Ramsey, Ozil, Sanchez; Giroud Subs: Ospina, Debuchy, Gabriel, Chambers, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Reine-Adelaide, Campbell.
Referee: Jon Moss (Sunderland)
Preamble
How would you get from London to Norwich? The roads are a bit of a nightmare around there. You have to get the train from Liverpool Street station, which is a sweaty hellhole that only seems to sell brown food. What about by sea? Sail up the river, out into the Thames Estuary then to the North Sea, round to Great Yarmouth and nip down the A47 to Carrow Road? Hitch-hiking maybe? Not massively safe, but if you go with a big group of pals you should be fine.
Arsenal chose to fly, which upset a few people and perhaps rightly so: pumping that sort of pollution into the atmosphere for a 14-minute trip isn’t ideal. But they’re there now, and they’re off to play some football.
Norwich and Alex Neil will be waiting for them at the end of their arduous journey, and they’ll be waiting with a plan. Well, sort of. Neil said this week:
It is not easy, I can assure you. It is more about the team ethic and the group and making sure we are filling holes and covering each other as much as we can.
“I think when you go man for man and get after them and press them then you are relying on individuals to win their battles and that is tough when you are asking lads to stop a world class player. If we can overload certain areas of the pitch it gives us a better chance of coping.
“We have analysts who study the last five or six games of each opponent so obviously we have looked at their West Brom game last weekend, and I would remind people Arsenal missed a penalty and a whole host of chances. For these types of game you need the bigger teams not to be firing on all cylinders and hope we are at the top of our level and if we can achieve that there is no reason we can’t get something out of the game.
“Attacking-wise they are really difficult to stop in full flow. Having broken them down this week and analysed them I certainly think they are one of the most difficult teams to set-up against to stop. They have so many tools in their locker.”
Arsenal have their own problems. Specifically in midfield, where they’re either going to have to play Mathieu Flamini or Calum Chambers, neither an ideal solution given that one isn’t much good these days and has his fingers in other pies, while the other is a defender who’s barely played this season. It won’t be Aaron Ramsey, unless Arsene Wenger has a big change of heart, as he reckons, with some reason, that a midfield pairing of Ramsey and Santi Cazorla is a bit lightweight. Wenger said:
In my mind, I have seen that the turn of our results last season was when I went for a bit of stability and put Coquelin in there. Now, I am a bit cautious on that front and I do not want to unbalance the team.
“Ramsey is more an offensive player, he is not a tactical, defensive player. I will use him there [centrally] when the game demands but is he naturally, with Cazorla, a balanced pair? Defensively, certainly, it’s a very adventurous one!
“I used him on the right because he gives us a balance, because we have Özil, who is an offensive player, we have Sánchez, we have Giroud or Walcott [up front], and we have Cazorla, so to balance a bit defensively I use Ramsey on the right. That’s where I will certainly continue to use him, unless the game demands to attack.”
By rights Arsenal should probably stroll this, but you never do know. Norwich have shown some improvement in recent weeks and, well, Arsenal are Arsenal. Let’s see.
Kick-off: 4pm GMT
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