Whoa! Aliadiere! That seemed to echo around the Riverside on Saturday, as the French cockney haunted his old club and gave us a good reason why he’s such a fans favourite. 

The game started very higgledy piggeldy, neither side really could keep possession and be poised to threaten the goal.  Arsenal had a very well worked move suffed past the post by Van Persie.  A chance from Diaby was far and wide away from the goal when a clear opportunity to square it to Adebayor to round off another team move was left squandered.  Diaby had another chance as well, this time Adebayor squared it to him but was then denied by Turnbull.

It took 17 minutes to break the deadlock, through Adebayor, a soft header in the six-yard box from a corner turned out to be the opener.  The more I look at it the more I think we could have done more to stop it, when playing Sunday league football you always shout ‘height for height’ and in this case someone like Huth or Riggott just sticking with Adebayor and not leaving him could have prevented it, either it could have been cleared or just simply putting him off. 

When Arsenal scored however I didn’t think this was another scenario ‘oh no here we go again’ Arsenal to score 4 in the first half and truly trounce us like many previous encounters which Sky Sports were happy to show before the match kicked off whilst waiting in the concourse.

We responded well, we grabbed the ball back off them and almost slowly but surely pushed forward in our play.  It took us 12 minutes to equalize through Jeremie Aliadiere; who scored our first header of the season (good stat, 3 anorak points: Ed) ; he saw a fantastic cross from Tuncay and reacted to it very quickly.  Alves, a 12.7m record signing had to watch from the bench as our 2 million frenchy played the lone striker. He seemed to play it well, utilising his pace to (nearly) full effect but there were times where you thought he would sprint his heart out for it, but overall he put in a good shift.

Boro had a penalty shout in the 35th minute, which was turned down.  Adam Johnson jinked past Clichy and he brought him down.  He stuck his foot out so there’s your ‘intent’ and he made enough contact for Johnson to go down but referee Peter Walton dismissed it.  (Ed, all the pundits on Sky pointed out that it was a bit of poor reffing, which it was, but we are used to cr*p refs now:Ed)

It was good to see Tony McMahon play; he played really well, always putting a foot in, we can confidently give him the nod whilst giving Hoyte plenty of time to get back fully fit. 

Towards the end Arsenal pushed for that sneaky second, substitute Bendtner had a great chanced denied by Turnbull and after a few corners from the Gunners a stable defence kept them out.  Boro had a chance on the other end after Downing bursting past Sagna and forcing a good save from Almunia to his near post. 

Overall it’s a good point, we’re in the relegation fight whether we like it or not, but if we manage to keep hold of our top players away from bigger clubs ‘we’ll be fine’. 

Arsenal however seem to have the Boro syndrome, beating bigger opposition on their day, and dropping points against lesser opposition.  We need at least 4 points out of our next 2 games in Fulham & Everton.

MarkA