Getting on here a bit late, but was an awesome experience the other night. Surreal experience being surrounded by so many fellow Arsenal fans. Was in the corner at the end Mertesacker scored, but quite far back so was difficult to work out who was who for a while. In the same section for tonight but much closer to the pitch.
Ozil was clearly the classiest player on the pitch. Welbeck and especially Walcott were absolutely woeful as you'd expect and made the keeper look good. Nelson on the right looked good and Willock I thought was decent. Bramall seemed ok on the ball but crossing wasn't great. Kolasinac seemed composed. Wasn't sure who some of the subs were as the announcer just said "Arsenal are making 10 subsitutions" without at least putting who they were up on the screen. Also, how are we pronouncing Lacazette? Announcer had "Lack-a-zetti" which I didn't think was quite right and sounds more Italian than French! Agree with the comment above that the what do you think of shit chant was a bit overused.
Pretty awesome to be in a full 80,000 stadium, compared to going to Wellington Pheonix games when 5,000-6,000 turn up to a 30,000 seater. Was surprisingly little queuing too despite the crowd. Got in quickly, and at half time managed to get out to go to the toilet, get a drink and get back in time for kickoff which is a struggle at the average Wellington game, and something you'd never consider trying at a sold out event. Also after staying back a short while to look at merchandise and get an ice cream we managed to get on the train immediately, compared to the 2 hours it can take leaving a concert in Auckland with half the amount of people. Everything seemed really well organised. Also got a photo with Gunnersaurus before the game. Hoping to get a photo with the FA Cup tonight, as by the time we found the queue for it on Thursday it was time to go into the stadium, so will try and get there a bit early for it tonight.
Went to the free fan party day yesterday too which was pretty good of the club to put on. Was in the stadium, and first they had Ospina, Ramsey, Xhaka, Elneny, Walcott, Welbeck and the FA Cup on stage for some Q&A and a game with some kids. Then Ray Parlour came on for a bit of story telling, then finally the team had an open training. Seemed to drag on a bit as the keepers were out for a good half hour before the team who came on much later than schedule, possibly got stuck in traffic on the way. MC was the actual ground announcer for Arsenal so they have even brought him out. Whole thing has been done with class as you would expect. Was interesting watching training, especially the keepers being one myself. Lehmann got some cheers but just seemed to be the guy who fetched the balls from behind the goal and didn't have any input!
As for the strikers, Giroud was the best finisher. They did a crossing drill, and though he started off poorly by struggling to get anything on target, once he found the net a couple of times he started banging them in from all over, even scored a scissor kick from the edge of the box. Lacazette on the other hand barely got anything on target, let alone score. Welbeck and Walcott didn't seem to be in that group and were up the other end doing some sort of passing drill which was probably just as well.The cries of "SHOOOOOOOOT" every time the ball went near Xhaka got a little tiresome after a while. Reckon 20,000 people could have turned up.
