League match: Lyon 1-3 Arsenal FINAL; An embarrassing day for the defending champions Olympique Lyonnais at the Stade Gerland yesterday. Samir Nasri opened the scoring with an early 16′ goal that blew past young keeper Hugo Lloris and into the top corner.
He looks like a rat but he can certainly bury a ball
The highlight of the match was the show of Red on the field of Blue versus White. Both sides recieved red cards, Arsenal defender William Gallas is lucky the match suspension is only two matches considering he nearly broke young striker Karim Benzema’s leg in three places.
Twenty minutes after Gallas was sent off newly acquired Left Wing Back Eric Abidal was red carded for a terrible challenge on Adebayor, who was breaking past all three of Lyon’s backs. Both Gallas and Abidal will miss two games.
Arsenal kept the pressure on, and Adebayor eventually buried another brilliant goal. With the Gunners leading 2-0 Lyon made a tactical change, subbing the sub par performance from Captain Juninho with Swedish Attacking midfielder Kim Kallstrom.
This substitution as well as a formation change made an obvious difference-Lyon cut the lead in half with a goal from karim Benzema, set up from a through ball from Sidney Govou.
A match reversal was surely taking place-Gunners forwards Emanuel Adebayor and Nasri had already hit the post 3 times, and racked up over 12 shots on target, but early in the second half Lyon put 7 shots on target and hit the post twice.
A heartbreaking effort from benzema in the 75′ assured that the Gunners could not be beat, when the Gones front man broke the defense (a rarity in its own) and put the ball past Manuel Almunia, only to watch the trickling ball hit the right and left post-before it was cleared out.
The Gunners 10 man defensive effort was superb, and should not be underestimated by second place Liverpool who finished on top of the league last season. The two teams face off in week 3.
Adebayor tallied his second goal in the 90th, putting a cap on a bottle of bubbly that was shaken by the Lyon offense but never erupted.
