The New and Improved Arsenal F.C.

Yesterday was quite easily one of the worst days of my life. Just hours before the match, I got the news that one of my good friends, a 19-year-old, passed away in unfortunate circumstances.

Quite honestly, the last thing that was on my mind was football.

That said, I needed to get my mind off the tragic event and hence decided to go ahead and watch what was going to be a fairly daunting task for the young Gunners at the Reebok Stadium.

Let's face it, Arsenal had quite a terrible record at the Reebok and invariably got out-muscled in games which were atrocious to watch for Gunners' fans.

The day didn't get any better for me when Kevin Davies rose up and headed in the first goal after some poor defending from the Arsenal centrebacks. What followed was a barrage of Arsenal attacks, a couple of shots hitting the post and two goals in two minutes.

That's what people might remember. The performance of Arsenal, though, showed a side which all of us were waiting for. It showed a considerable amount of maturity and patience.

It would've been easy for players to switch off after conceding the first goal in a stadium where they always got intimidated.

Denilson and Alex Song were absolutely outstanding. The latter in particular is winning over Arsenal fans with each performance of his. His composure on the ball and the fact that most of us wouldn't have noticed him much in the game just go to show the defensive work put in by him.

Denilson, as I mentioned in one of my previous articles, is also maturing very well and capped his performance off with a superbly taken goal.

What was equally impressive was that Arsenal didn't seem to get intimidated by Bolton's physical game. They even seemed to relish it at times. Yes, a lot of free-kicks were given away—but after Arsenal conceded the goal, the defending seemed to get better.

The backline dealt with the second ball a lot better and even though Bolton attacked quite a lot in the second half, the defense stood strong and gave us very few nervy moments.

Many people questioned Manuel Almunia's presence in the Arsenal starting eleven, and I heard so many Gunners fans saying that they wanted to see a "good goalkeeper" in goal.

Yesterday's performance just went to show that Almunia is a superb shot stopper. He also seemed to enjoy Bolton's tactics of putting men in front of him during the corners. How many times would you have seen Jens Lehmann laughing with Kevin Nolan when the latter stood right in front of him when a corner was taken?

Emmanuel Adebayor and Nicklas Bendtner also worked their socks off up front. I was impressed with Adebayor's work rate and his passing was quite superb. Nicklas Bendtner showed what Arsenal were lacking so many times during the previous trips to the Reebok.

His goal was extremely well taken, and answered one of my main criticisms of Arsenal forwards—that nobody attacks the ball in the six-yard box.

Theo Walcott came on in the end and ripped the Bolton defense apart—he sucked in four players in the build up to the third goal before playing the ball to Adebayor. His pace will trouble any defense in the world.

I'm sure that all the Arsenal fans will be incredibly happy for him and Arsene Wenger—after all, he put so much faith in him in the first place.

Even though we have beaten Bolton, we should remember that the season is a marathon. There are going to be tougher games in the season which we should brace ourselves for. The team seems to be learning very quickly and that is never a bad sign.

Now that Arsenal have remained unbeaten against Bolton the last seven competitive games between the two sides, we can well and truly say that Bolton aren't a bogey side for us anymore.

This is a new and improved Arsenal F.C.—let's just hope that we go from strength to strength in what is a crucial season for the club.