Arsenal 2-1 Over Aston Villa At Villa Park

A late Yossi Benayoun headed goal gave us the lions’ share of the spoils tonight over a resolute AstonVilla side that pressed us most of the match.  We didn’t play particularly well but we battled to a tough, earned 2-1 win.

I didn’t get to see the match as I was stuck at work, um, doing work, but here’s a few of the match reports from the various outlets: SkySports, BBC, ESPN, Fox Soccer & Goal.com.

Robin van Persie scored our opener from the penalty spot and the goal equaled Thierry Henry’s club record for most goals in a calender year with 34.  That puts Van the Man 2 shy of Alan Shearer’s Premier League record for the same feat.

Aston Villa, by all accounts, pushed on and were the better side for most of the match and equalized early in the second half when young winger Marc Albrighton capitalized on a defensive error from Thomas Vermaelen when the Belgian tried to give a header back to Per Mertesacker but it was poor and Albrighton pounced and slotted home.

Villa pushed on further following their equalizer and, again, from all the accounts, looked the better side, but it was our Israeli midfielder who scored on of all things, a header from a corner kick!  “Goonayoun” had only come on as a substitute some 5 minutes or so earlier and Yossi isn’t the stoutest of midfielders but he was on hand to nod home as the ball just eluded Brad Guzan giving us the win some 3 minutes before full time.

For further amusement, former Sp*rs defender, Alan Hutton, was sent off in stoppage time for being a former Sp*r or something.  Probably tried to pass off some dodgy lasagna as a health food.

So, three points in the bag after a tough match and Arsenal’s collapse into mid-table continues to…. oh, what’s that?  We’re in 5th place, you say?  Wow, that’s pretty good seeing as we’ve been a mid-table side since Patrick Vieira left. And Thierry Henry.  And Cesc Fabregas.

Unfortunately, as I didn’t watch the match, there’ll be no match ratings for this one.