By Boris Mellor
October 29 2006

I should be entitled to the return of half of my ticket fee today, as I only saw half a match. No I wasn’t late, I didn’t go for the bratwurst early, or come back from the break late. No I sat in my seat for the duration of the match.

Except only about half of the match was spent in open play. I have not seen such blatant time wasting since, well since February when Bolton came to entertain us (Entertain? Wrong word surely? ED)

Moyes had the cheek to complain that Old Mother Riley didn’t blow early enough for full time. As far as I can see Riley allowed four minutes added time, it was Wenger who was entitled to complain. From the moment Everton got a goal after 12 minutes they started to play for time. Riley did nothing about it, letting Howard delay as much as he liked.

At one stage, in the second half, the Everton fans held the ball to ransom, and Howard pretended to negotiate its release. He got on his mobile to the United Nations. He then feigned not to notice that another ball was thrown to him. He placed it on the spot and slowly proceeded to begin his crawl up to the ball, so the Everton fans threw the original back onto the field, so he then stopped and took ages retrieving and clearing the original. It was a farce.

Arsenal were all over Everton like a rash with 7 shots on target, and 13 off target. That’s 20 shots to Everton's miserable 2 in total. Yes TWO! Arsenal had 16 corners to their three. At times Arsenal were playing beautiful football, although at times I felt they were too quick to shoot. Henry was slightly off colour, but he was also denied by Howard’s goal keeping on at least two occassions. Fabregas was excellent, and van Persie’s team work much improved. But inaccurate shooting and good goalkeeping frustrated the Gunners attempt to draw level.

Arsenal had two valid penalty claims turned down, meanwhile Andy Johnson dived so blatantly in the area that even Old Mother Riley didn’t award a penalty, he didn’t book Johnson either, the cheating diving asshole.

Wenger was not prepared to lose his unbeaten record at home to such negative tactics, so he went for broke. First he replaced Djourou on 67 minutes with Walcott, reducing the number of defenders down to three at the back. Three minutes later Arsenal pressure won a free kick in a perfect position for RvP, he curled it into the top corner, it was close enough for Howard to touch, but too powerful to stop.

Wenger now brought on Walcott and Aliadiere and pushed even harder for the winner, by now there were five up front and just two at the back. Good job one of them was Toure, who was immense in very sense of the word. But Everton kept blocking, and playing for time.

Once again conceding an early soft goal proved to be costly, Arsenal have become static when defending free kicks and corners. They were also too static at the other end, 16 corners led to absolutely nothing. It was clear on every occasion that Everton would get the first ball, and if not the first the second. The Gunners lacked a Senderos or Campbell to attack the ball at corners.

However it’s not all doom and gloom, a bit of drilling and practice can put it right. Some have described it as a reality check, well the reality yesterday was the 16^th point out of 18 over the last 6 games,  with three of those points against Manchester United away.