Bolton: Carling Cup

Good to see Vermaelen back in the side and he put in a typical tough-tackling assured defensive performance.

Interesting to see AW finally play Arshavin in a central role. I wouldn’t describe his performance as outstanding but he scored one and created one so that’s not a bad return. His goal, a shot through a crowd of players, was typically Arshavin and caught the goalkeeper by surprise. He has the ability to do the unexpected and not many players would have gone for goal at the moment he did. As I’ve said before, he’s much more dangerous in the box rather than stuck out wide.

The second goal was an ‘Henry-like’ curling shot by Park – an excellent finish. Or, at least, I think it was Park - the chap behind me was having difficultly identifying Arsenal's Asian players though I suspect that his level of knowledge was suspect as he told his American companion that the football season runs from September (then corrected to last week in August) to June. That's the problem with the Carling Cup - you get a lot of people attending who normally don't and their level of knowledge is not on a par with the regular fan (tongue-in-cheek comment, of course,  and could equally be taken either way!). In fact, I was the only regular in my part of the front row - no Laurel, John, Dominic, Ali x 2, little man and his little son, Judy, Nigel or Peter.

Bolton came more into the game at 2-1 as they pressed forward. There was one heart-stopping ‘Flapianski’ moment when he contrived to mishandle a shot unintentionally over the bar. Mannone is back from loan and on the bench – he must be close to being #2.