Cesc Fabregas Stars as Arsenal Beat Bolton 4-1

Good morning/afternoon to each and everybody from a lovely sunny Dublin. I'll be as quick as I can with today's effort and I'll try not to rant too much over the dreadful refereeing in Arsenal's 4-1 win over Bolton yesterday.

First of all, the boss sprung a little bit of a surprise on us by leaving the three players who had played for France out of the team and replacing Sagna, Clichy, and Diaby with Eboue, Gibbs, and Wilshere.

Other than that, the team was as expected with Chamakh and Rosicky replacing the injured duo of RVP and Walcott. The big questions were how would Cesc play in his first home start of the season, how would Chamakh play, and how our new central defensive partnership would fare.

The opening exchanges were encouraging enough and we should have been ahead early on as a fantastic ball by Rosicky put Arshavin through but he missed his one on one with the keeper. Half-way through the half we did take the lead when Wilshere put a lovely ball beyond the far post after a corner had been cleared to him.

Cesc was the man on the end of the ball and he poked it back across the goal only a couple of yards out. The two Arsenal centre backs were there and it was Koscielny who managed to scramble it home with Bolton appealing for offside in vain.

A few more good chances came and went for Arsenal as Rosicky and Arshavin in particular could have stretched our lead before half time. However, in true Arsenal style we threw away a goal just before half time.

Koscielny attempted to head a long ball down the middle back to Almunia but he didn't put enough into it and it put a Bolton player through on Almunia who forced him wide of the goal. When he hung the ball up in the six yard area, Elmander ran onto it and and headed home. There was some criticism of Gibbs for not challenging him, but I thought Elmander had a run on the ball and Gibbs could do very little.

So it was all square at halftime despite the fact that we had cut Bolton open on a number of occasions and it was very frustrating. What was also frustrating was the fact that Davies was still on the pitch after a tackle from behind on Rosicky that went unpunished and a very bad challenge on Koscielny that could easily have been a straight red but he only got a yellow for it.

In the second half, it was more of the same from Arsenal as we took the lead again in the 60th minute after good work from Arshavin who played it to Cesc who then clipped it across the box for Chamakh to head home. We were looking good to go on and get more goals, and only a few minutes later the game turned even more in our favour.

If you have seen the MOTD highlights, you won't have seen the assault on Koscielny by Davies, where he didn't look at the ball and clearly played the man as they jumped to head the ball. I thought it was another straight red card for him but the referee chose to see it differently and booked Eboue instead for his protests about the challenge.

Whether the referee realised his mistake and and decided to do something about it or not I don't know, but soon afterwards Bolton were down to 10 men.

Song challenged for the ball to the side of our box and clearly tripped the Bolton player but the referee played on and as Arsenal broke Arshavin played the ball to Chamakh who back heeled it into his path as he ran on. Cahill tackled Chamakh from behind as he flicked the ball and he caught him which brought Chamakh down just off the pitch.

It wasn't a particularly bad challenge and it merited a yellow card at the most in my opinion but the referee, in his infinite wisdom, chose to stop play and give Cahill a straight red card—never mind the fact that Arshavin was straight through and the obvious thing to do was play the advantage and deal with Cahill afterwards.

At that stage we had already seen Diaby come on for Wilshere and Arsenal were pushing forward, looking for a third goal to wrap things up. However, Diaby didn't last too long as a very bad challenge on him by Robinson looked like it could almost have broken his leg.

Again, the referee decided to do nothing about it and when Diaby eventually managed to get up he took exception to the challenge and had to be held back before he took some revenge. He didn't last much longer and limped off in 72nd minute to be replaced by Denilson.

I know Diaby was sent off a few years ago at Bolton for a very bad challenge, and rightly so, but for the commentators on Setanta to decide that it was a more worthwhile thing to discuss than the very bad challenge on him was puzzling, to say the least.

When I then realised that Stuart Houston was the so called expert co-commentating I was even more puzzled as he is an ex-Arsenal man. He was right behind Bolton in every dirty challenge committed throughout the afternoon and accused the Arsenal players of making a meal of him. His is one name I'll be removing from my Christmas card list.

Arsenal continued to press for another goal and it eventually came with 12 minutes left when some good work by Arshavin found Song and he deftly chipped it over the advancing keeper for Arsenal's 1,000th Premier league goal under Arsene Wenger. It gave Arsenal the breathing space they needed and Bolton were looking very tired at that stage.

Only five minutes later the fourth and last goal came when a 24-pass move by Arsenal ended with Cesc clipping a ball over the top for Vela, who had come on for Chamakh, to run on to and he finished with aplomb into the corner of the net. Cesc had three assists to his name and although he was still not back to his best he is certainly well on the way there. 

I thought Bolton played into our hands by playing a high line and Arsenal kept getting in behind them as Cesc and Rosicky picked their passes very well. If it wasn't for some poor finishing by Arshavin in particular we could have scored a lot more and we had a few penalty shouts as well of which I though at least two were definite penalties.

I suppose Bolton thought that they could handle our pace with Walcott out of the side but they were mistaken and I hope plenty of other teams come to The Emirates and try to play that way too.

Other News:

Earlier in the day "Manure" had done an Arsenal at Everton and thrown away a two goal lead in injury time to only claim one point which leaves us clear in second place on our own two points behind Chelsea who have still to play anything resembling a good side yet.

It was also good to see both City and The Spuds drop points as they could only draw against Blackburn at home and West Brom away respectively. That's it for now, but I'll run through any other thoughts on the game tomorrow.

See You Tomorrow.