Semechki for all


Semechki.... The small sunflower seeds that are so popular at Eastern European football grounds were in abundance at the Arsenal v Shakhtar game on Sunday. Free entry and enough seeds , served in red cups with the Arsenal logo on, led to a crowd of 33,000 chomping fans entering the ground. I don't know what state the ground was in today, but I presume the local sparrow population was pretty chuffed.


The game was also fantastic and one of the best I have seen in a while. Unfortunately Arsenal lost 4-2, but they always entertain. Nobody apart from Metalist has scored more, and nobody apart from Zakarpatty has conceded more.


Arsenal went ahead in the 25th minute with a goal from Zakarluka, who I haven't seen play so well since his CSKA days of yesteryear. The same can't be said of Vitaliy Reva, who was a goalkeeper of heroic status at CSKA, but seems to be a nervous wreck in goals for the Arse.


Anyway, surprisingly it stayed at 1-0 until half time, and we expected Shakhtar to get back in it with a dodgy penalty in the second half, but things didn't work out like that.


Shakhtar came out fired up in the second half, nearly as fired up as Nadiya was about the guy behind her dropping the loathsome semechki on her seat. The pressure was too much for Reva and the defence though, and Shakhtar got an equaliser on 51 minutes with a goal from Jadson. The game then took another twist though with Lysenko putting Arsenal ahead. However, his somewhat OTT celebrations were fairly short lived as Kravchenko equalised yet again on 67 minutes(bloody hell, so Shakhtar still have some Ukrainians playing for them). The inevitable then happened , as the flood gates opened and Brandao and then O.Hai, finished off the job.


In general, Arsenal looked great going forward and horrendous in defence, so the statistics don't lie on this occassion. One thing I have to wonder about though is why Bito came on for Arsenal. He runs around like a headless chicken in slow motion, let's hope he proves me wrong about this analysis in the not too distant future.


The afternoon was rounded off with a couple of beers in the park with Ewig and his mates, classy!
The photo shows that OTT goal celebration, or were they just looking for the free semechki?

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