Nervy, Happy Christmas Present

What a way to celebrate the holidays as we defeated Aston Villa 2-1 this evening. It wasn't Arsenal at their most fluent, and it sure was nervy at times, but in the end our excellent loan signing Yossi Benayoun secured the points with our second goal of the season scored from a corner kick.

We went ahead early in the first half via a well-taken penalty by Robin Van Persie, which takes his tally to 34 this calendar year, tying the legend Thierry Henry's record for a single year. And hey, he's still got a game left this year, so why not go ahead and break the Arsenal record and maybe even the Premier League record while he's at it?

The penalty, by the way, came after a lovely piece of skill from Theo Walcott to escape from two defenders and put him in clear inside the penalty area. When he was tugged it was always going to be a penalty kick. Unless of course Phil Down were refereeing, which thankfully he was not.

Till halftime the game was pretty even, but after the half Villa came out strong as ever. They began to close us down higher up the pitch and to be honest we looked out of ideas and creativity. Finally all their pressure paid off when they forced an error out of the Verminator. Honestly it was a bad header and a bad decision from the Belgian: Aston Villa capitalised.

After that Villa were the side with more desire and more drive, and it looked like this one might be getting away from us, but then came the substitutions. Arshavin and Benayoun on after Rosicky had made an immediate impact. And with four or five attackers on the pitch at the same time the goal was always going to come.

We poked and prodded, and looked like slicing open Villa until finally a corner from Van Persie (our 11th of the half) was nodded home by Benayoun. He's deserved a Premier League goal and he looked overall excellent tonight, as he did last time he played against Olympiacos, a game in which he also bagged a goal. Why aren't we starting him more?

In the end it was a happy three points, and thank goodness. With everyone around us winning at the moment and Chelsea taking on Sp*rs tomorrow we needed a solid three points tonight, and right at the end we got them. This is the kind of game that shows the solidity and experience of a team, getting three points when you perhaps don't deserve them but desperately need them.

On tonight's evidence, we're as solid as ever. Till next time,

Fab 4