Arsenal: Resilient Fulham Thwart Arsenal at the Emirates

A resilient Fulham held Arsenal to a one-all draw at the Emirates in their premier league Round 13 match.

Arsenal went into this match on the back of a good run of form that had seen them win eight of their last nine matches, and after an impressive 2:1 victory over a very good Borussia Dortmund side in their UEFA Champions League match in midweek—extending and garnishing their recent good form—expectations were high for this match.

Arsenal were to play a Fulham side that has managed only three draws in the last 25 meetings between the two sides, losing a woeful 22 of those encounters.  Recent statistics also favored the Gunners, whose recent form as well as their free-scoring captain, Robin Van Persie, stood them in good stead to win the match. 

In contrast, Fulham lay just second above the relegation zone on the table.

Most pundits predicted a win for Arsenal, including your truly, although I had warned in a recent article that Arsenal could drop points against Fulham.

And indeed they did.

In fact, Arsenal needed all the resilience they could muster to snatch a point from the stubborn Fulham side, who had gone ahead in the 65th minute through a Thomas Vermaelen own goal.

But Vermaelen scored again in the 85th minute to atone for his earlier mistake.

It then made for a breath-taking finish to the match after Arsenal’s equalizer, as they pushed for the winner that never came. 

Ominously for Arsenal fans, Van Persie, who of recent has seemed incapable of stopping scoring, drew a blank, being thwarted by the sharp Mark Schwarzer—the Fulham goalkeeper—on a number of occasions, and by the last ditch clearances of the Fulham defense.

For Arsenal fans, who have bordered recently on the euphoric, composing one paean of adulation after another, sometimes even indulging in shameless sycophancy—indictments that are true to a large extent of this writer—it was a case of great expectation deflected. 

Their reaction to this turn of events is sure to speak volumes of their character.  For those who have been skeptical of the team's recent progress, they will claim this for a justification.

For the players, their reaction to this drawback is sure to be a measure of where their confidence level is at this point of their progress.  Will they be able to shrug off the drawback and forge ahead, or will their wonted case of falling apart return? 

It could all go downhill from here, I had warned last week.

The result of the match owed to two factors to a large degree—a fatigued Arsenal team after a difficult game in midweek, and Fulham's well-worked defense.

The first factor was clearly evident in the second half when Fulham enjoyed good spells of possession.  Arsenal players became somewhat static at certain stretches of the match when Fulham had the ball.

This, of course, is the downside of having to play in UEFA competitions.  It wasn't until Arsene Wenger introduced the rested Gervinho for Aaron Ramsey and Abou Diaby for Per Metersacker in the 68th minute that the spark gradually returned to Arsenal.

The second factor was an exemplar of good marshaling of zonal spaces.  This, in fact, is the main reason why Arsenal did not get the breakthrough they worked hard for in the match. 

A troubling sign for any concerned Arsenal fan was how the Fulham defense was—to a large extent—unflappable in the face of Arsenal attacks, or why Arsenal could not quite splice it apart.

The question now remains: having been brought down from the heights of euphoria, what now for both Gunners and Gooners?  A whole week lies ahead to determine the answer.