Arsenal Are Held By Resilient Middlesbrough

Arsenal Are Held By Resilient Middlesbrough

Arsenal’s winning run of 6 games came to an end on Saturday as a resolute Middlesbrough managed by Spanish manager Aitor Karanka held the recently rampant Gunners to a hard-fought scoreless draw at the Emirates. On a day of celebration for the manager (not that he seemed that interested in it) as the boss turned 67 years old, Arsenal were dominant in possession but could not find the necessary cutting edge in the final third to break the dead-lock.

In a match where it was fair to say Middlesbrough created the more clear cut chances and actually deserved much better than the point they ended up with, you could argue Arsenal were lucky to avoid defeat. However, with the goalless draw that the Gunners played out with struggling Boro it did allow them to go joint top of the Premier League with Liverpool a point ahead of idle Manchester City who do not play until lunchtime on Sunday against Southampton.


As predicted Santi Cazorla did not play and his absence was readily apparent as the Gunners seemed to miss a beat without their Spanish talisman and were unable to really ever find their feet in the game. Cech was probably Arsenal’s best player which gives you an idea of how the game went.

Aitor Karanka had Middlesbrough set up very much in the same way as Jose Mourinho has done so many times when he was at Chelsea. Mourinho has never lost to Wenger’s Arsenal and you could see the Portuguese manager’s fingerprints on Karanka’s tactics. Karanka was Mourinho’s assistant at Real Madrid meaning the former colleagues may even have discussed the game ahead of time.

Mesut Ozil did get the ball into the Boro net late on for the Gunners but the goal was correctly disallowed for offside and to be fair to Middlesbrough the win would have flattered Arsenal.