Montpellier 1-2 Arsenal – Gunners hold on in France

Arsenal secured a win in their opening game of their Champions League group last night after beating French champions Montpellier 2-1. It certainly wasn’t made easy for them though as the French club were making their first appearance in the competition, looking fired up for the game throughout. Arsene Wenger started a 3 match touchline ban for confronting the referee in last season’s game against AC Milan. As Arsenal went out that night, the ban rolled over to the new season. Arsenal started last season with the same problem, with Wenger having picked up a touchline ban for the same thing, only against Barcelona in 2010/11. Steve Bould, Arsenal’s new assistant manager, was in charge of the team for this game.

Arsenal got off to a bad start. Abou Diaby picked up a booking 21 seconds into the game, the quickest yellow card in the competition since November 2009. Nine minutes into the game and a sloppy start got even worse for Arsenal. Thomas Vermaelen brought down Younes Belhanda when he was running away from goal, and was punished for his silly challenge when the referee pointed to the spot to award Montpellier the penalty.

Up stepped the man that won the penalty, Belhanda, who cheekily chipped the penalty in past Mannone. If Mannone had stayed still, he’d have not only saved the penalty, but also would have made Belhanda look a fool. It’s the penalty that is brilliant when it comes off, but if it doesn’t, the penalty taker looks stupid and will be criticised for it.

Arsenal seemed to improve after that incident. Nine minutes later, Arsenal had turned the scores around and were in the lead.  The equaliser was typical of Arsenal. Lovely build up play through passing and this one resulted in a goal. Cazorla combined with Giroud, who sent Lukas Podolski in the clear to score the equaliser. Podolski never looked like he was going to miss it in honesty, the German has started to find form early in his Arsenal career, with 3 goals in his last 3 games.

Podolski celebrates his equaliser.

Two minutes later and another in form man was on the scoresheet. Gervinho, who scored his first two goals of 2012 on Saturday in a 6-1 win over Southampton, got on the end of a Carl Jenkinson cross to score what turned out to be the winner from close range.

Gervinho scores the winner.

For a while after that, Arsenal looked as though they may have been in for a very comfortable evening. They looked comfortable for most of the first half and went into the break 2-1 up. However, the feeling of comfort was gone in the second half. Diaby should have been punished for dilly and dallying in the box when Cabella picked his pocket, only to waste the golden opportunity he had.

Cabella again went close not long after, with his chip shot rattling the crossbar. Montpellier had a lot of the ball in the second half, but after those two opportunities, their best chance came late on. Belhanda fired straight at Mannone when it looked easier to score and then a penalty shout was turned down in the last minute after Diaby challenged Cabella. Diaby in particular looked very tired, having not played through injury against Southampton, he somehow lasted the full 90 minutes. In truth, Arsenal looked very tired second half as a whole, but they held on for an important win.

Arsenal went to the top of Group B, level with Schalke who won 2-1 away to Olympiakos. Arsenal’s next Champions League game is at home to Olympiakos on October 3rd. They have important matches against Manchester City and Chelsea, Coventry at home in the League Cup in between, before they can begin to think of the Champions League again.

The next couple of weeks will tell me a lot about Arsenal and what they can do this year.  3-6 points from the two league games would tell me they can challenge this year, I really don’t know what they will do in honesty. I go in with hope rather than expectation, but this team is playing better than expected by most fans. I am happy with how they are doing and always said they’d be better off without Van Persie once he made his intentions clear. Fingers are crossed for the weekend. Southampton gave City a good game and look what we did to them. They may still be stung by Real Madrid’s comeback against them last night too. That could work both ways too though.