3 points is all it's worth but oh they taste sweet.
The 'crazy' results keep coming in this years Premier league, and today's 3-5 win was quite frankly mental. How we weren't 2-0 down in the first 5 mins was anyone's guess but how Gervinho and RVP missed from point blank range inside the first 10 mins was a mystery. My mind very much went back to Chamakh's miss of last season, fearing the worse.
As it was I was right to have such fears, Lampard stealing in behind Per Mertesacker to give the Chavs the lead.
We managed to level it up, deservedly, with Aaron Ramsey playing a delightful slide-rule pass through to Gervinho who sucked in Cech before setting up RVP with a simple tap in.
You knew they would score from the corner and only Arteta know's what he was doing. Sky's 'pundits' slammed Per again, but if Arteta had stayed where he was meant to be then we'd have gone in at HT 1-1.
That said our defence (Koscielny apart) was woeful in the first half. I thought it was a bad idea to play Djourou at right-back and he was skinned time and again by Cole. Both Per and Santos looked tentative, which can be forgiven considering this was their first London derby, but these guys have 100+ international caps between them.
The team that emerged for the second half was more intense and tenacious with their tackling and hassling of the opposition. it paid dividends as Santos grew in confidence throughout the half and by the end of the game, looked almost 'comfortable' at the back. Per too grew into the game, reading the danger on the odd occasion that Chelsea threatened second half, bar Mata's long range effort and a Lampard free-kick I can't remember much else from the home team.
I think it's fair to say that we were lucky to still have 11 players on the pitch at the end as Chesney should have gone for taking out Cole, but it's nice to have some luck for once.
It goes without saying that RVP was clinical as ever (without actually doing that much) but our stand-out performers for me were Koscienly, who's growing into the defender that Wenger insists can be 'world class', Ramsey and Theo.
Ramsey is definitely back to his pre-stoke form and Theo has learnt that he can be so much more dangerous by running inside at the goal, not just down the wing. His final ball today was outstanding and his goal showed that his extra work on the training ground has paid off; the quick feet to recover from being on the floor to jink past Ivanovic and The Racist was something we've never seen before and the finish was emphatic.
For all the post match euphoria we need to keep our feet firmly nail-gunned on the floor, it's only 3 points, just like United only got 3 points from us and City 3 points from United. We do need to sure up the defence and we do need to keep RVP fit.
If we can do of that, then who know's where we'll be come May....
