Photos of some of the match action Arsenal v Napoli
Posts
Arsenal 2 Napoli 2 - One of those games of 2 halves
Despite losing Cavani to Monaco, although they have replaced him with Higuan, much to Arsenal's chagrin and naming Benitez as their manager for next season I can see Napoli challenging for Serie A next season. They seem to have a number of quality players and plenty of strength in depth. Against Arsenal they certainly started off the brighter of the two teams. However, one definite fault in the Arsenal team was the way they fell for 2 Napoli sucker punches. Wenger is supposed to be tactically astute, but when you are relying on Mertesacker in defence it is perhaps not that wise. Napoli knew that if they played deep in defence and passed the ball around then they could lure Koscielny out of defence and then pump the ball forward to one of their fast players who would leave the flat footed Mertesacker lolloping behind like a pub player with a hangover. Lorenzo Insigne scored on 7 minutes with exactly the aforementioned trick and Goran Pandev made it 2 with an almost identical move....
Pre-match photos from Arsenal v Napoli
The Arsenal players warm up Just before the players entered the pitch. The players enter the pitch.
Emirates Cup Pre-tournament photos
A few photos from the Emirates from before the tournament started.
A trip to the Emirates
Last year there was no Emirates Cup because of the Olympics, but the tournament was back this year. In 2011 Arsenal were joined by PSG, New York Redbulls and Boca Juniors. This time the opponents were Galatasaray, Porto and Napoli. The Arsenal fans lived up to their reputation of not creating any atmosphere and being more interested in consuming hot dogs and buying replica shirts, but there was a pretty big Turkish contingent, who made their presence known inside and outside the ground. The Napoli fans were also in good form and a rendition of 'Bella Ciao' made them more popular with me. The next few posts will be about things that happened on the day. We were there on the first day when Porto played Galatasaray and Arsenal took on Napoli. The tournament as a whole was eventually won by Galatasaray after a great performance by Didier Drogba in the final game against Arsenal on Sunday.