Arsenal retain the Emirates Cup

By Aashish Siwan

Arsenal hosted AC Milan, Celtic and Lyon at the Emirates Stadium in the Emirates Cup, the annual Arsenal pre-season tournament.

Day 1

The tournament action got under way with Celtic taking on Lyon. Goals from Michel Bastos (28^th minute) and Harry Novillo (54^th minute) had put Lyon ahead and left Celtic with all to do but Celtic did manage a late come back with goals from Gary Hooper (82^nd Minute) and substitute Georgios Samaras (90^th minute). The tournament opener ended in a 2-all draw and both teams were awarded 3 points (one for the draw and 1 point for each goal as per the tournament rules).

Then came the match we’d all been waiting for. Arsenal took on a very experienced A C Milan side, which saw Mathieu Flamini return to London 2 years after leaving the Gunners.

Wenger opted to start Lukasz Fabianski in goal, Thomas Vermaelen (c) and Laurent Koscielny at centre back, Emmanuel Eboue at right-back, Kieran Gibbs at left-back, Tomas Rosicky, Jack Wilshere and Emmanuel Frimpong in midfield and Samir Nasri, Marouane Chamakh and Andrey Arshavin in attack. An attendance of 60,012 was reported on the official site and a fair few of the 60,012 would have been wearing the red and white of Arsenal and would have turned up to see Chamakh and Koscielny make their debuts at the Emirates Stadium and also get a chance to gauge the performances of the young and the returning Gunners on show.

Chamakh put in a man of the match performance and gave the Gunners the lead (assisted by Arshavin) in the 36^th minute only for Alexandre Pato to head in an equaliser in the 83 rd minute. This, along with the draw between Celtic and Lyon, saw Arsenal at the bottom of the group, equal on points with A C Milan (2 points a piece) with a day’s competition behind us.

Day 2 (the final day)

Day two began with A C Milan taking on Lyon. Borriello gave Milan the lead in the 55^th minute but Jimmy Briand equalised for Lyon with ten minutes to go. The match ended 1-all giving Arsenal (or Celtic) a golden opportunity to claim the Emirates Cup.

Arsenal started a much different side to the one that took on A C Milan with Manuel Almunia (c) in goal, Bacary Sagna at left-back, Thomas Vermaelen and Johan Djourou at centre back, Gale Clichy at left-back, Emmanuel Frimpong at defensive midfield, Jack Wilshere and Tomas Rosicky in midfield, Theo Walcott, Jay Emmanuel-Thomas and Carols Vela in attack.

Vela (3^rd minute), Sagna (45^th minute) and second half substitute Samir Nasri (51^st minute) all obliged with goals to give Arsenal a 3 – 0 lead before Georgios Samaras missed a penalty and Daryl Murphy pulled a goal back for Celtic in the 72^nd minute. Ki Sung-Yueng scored on the 83^rd minute to make sure the Arsenal defense got a good work out to finish the tournament. The Gunners held on to retain the Emirates Cup with a grand total of 8 point and a good workout for the squad in the two day tournament.

Apologies for the match summaries as I did not watch either of the Arsenal matches (hint hint Arsenal.com. It would have been great to have these matches streamed online as well).

It was great to see Johan Djourou shrug off his injury worries to feature for the full 90 minutes and be put through his paces by a determined Celtic attack.

Aaron Ramsey – This report in the Daily Mail (Warning! Article contains an image of Ramsey’s injury at Stoke) has the young Welshman back from injury as early as November this year. As much as I’d love for that to be true, there is no mention of this on Arsenal.com so, even though the article has quoted Wenger, I won’t get my hopes high just yet.

Coming up next we have the sixth and final match of pre-season with the Gunner travelling to Poland to take on Legia Warsaw at the Wojska Polskiego. Kick off is this Sunday morning at 2 am.

Correction – Now, I did mention that Arsenal will be playing seven pre-season matches as I was under the impression that the friendly match confirmed against Boreham Wood was actually for the first team but of course that fixture was for the Reserve and youth team.