Arsenal 1 City 0

Here are some quick player ratings from Arsenal's 1-0 victory over Man City this weekend. Starters -Manuel Almunia - 8.0 - made a few good saves and more importantly, didn't make the big mistake like Lehmann had in the first two matches of the season. If I'm Wenger, I leave him in for a while. -Gael Clichy - 7.0 - I love this guy, for me, he's already nearing the level of Cashley, he's gotta break into the French national team picture soon - he's been called up a few times but never played - it will be tough though since when motivated Eric Abidal is one of the best leftbacks in the world. As always, he showed he's extremely dangerous going forward against City and rock-solid in the back. He did however send in some pretty bad crosses from good positions in this particular match which was quite frustrating. -Kolo Toure - 8.0 - he played awesome, holding a makeshift defense, that featured a central midfielder (Gilberto) playing beside him at center back and another midfielder (Flamini) playing rightback for most of the match. My favorite player, will be tough when he's gone in the middle of the season for the African Nations Cup. -Gilberto - 4.0 - I like him in the center of the midfield but his lack of experience playing centerback showed this match with his positioning. Most of City's best chances were the result of his being out of position. -Bacary Sagna - no rating, only played like 15 minutes before getting hurt. I was very disappointed because he has been getting rave reviews from the Arsenal fan sites for his first few matches and also had just received his first cap for France last week. Can't wait to see him for a full match. Nice hair too. -Mathieu Flamini - 5.0 - he gets docked a point for being the one who injured Sagna, though to be fair, there really wasn't much he could do. He had a lot of trouble dealing with Petrov (who was City's best attacker by far imo) but he's not a true defender, so I can't be too hard for him. He is a great guy to have around though since he can play so many positions relatively well (though none exceptionally), especially with Senderos, Sagna, Eboue, and Gallas all out Saturday (and Djourou loaned out, doh, bad move Arsene). -Cesc - 6.0 - blah, he had a very pedestrian game but one of my rules for player ratings in soccer (my only rule at this point) is if you score the only goal in a 1-0 win, the worst rating you can have is 6.0. It was a nice finish, similar to Lampard's goal against Germany. -Rosicky - 5.5 - so so game. Was at the center of several nice buildups but didn't have a huge impact on the game. -Alexander Hleb - 6.0 - pretty invisible for much of the game but came through big, both by drawing the penalty that RVP blew, and assisting on Cesc's goal. His play in the first 4 games of the season has been an extremely pleasant surprise. -Emmanuel Adebayor - 4.0 - did well in the air but didn't take any of his 2 or 3 half chances and also very noticeably took the lazy way out on two plays that may or may not have been something (RVP cutting it across the keeper one time only for Adebayor to not be at the far post and giving up on what looked like a 50-50 through ball vs. Richard Dunne). -Robin van Persie - 4.0 - often dropped back and was given tons and tons of space 25-30 yards out on numerous occasions and never did much with it. Also blew his penalty by going straight down the middle (at least elevate it a little if you do that so the keeper can't save it with his feet). Overall, it was an off game, but I still love this guy - if he can stay healthy, he should score 20+ goals in the league this season. Bench -Denilson - 6.0 - played almost an entire match after coming on for Sagna. Looked good not great - is clearly an extremely promising player. -Eduardo - 3.0 - was pretty horrendous on his home debut. Gave away possession on several occasions and also did not take his chances. Probably nerves more than anything since he came on as a sub so he never really was able to settle into the game. I'm still confident that his addition and improvement from RVP, Adebayor, and Hleb can offset the loss of Henry. -Song - 2.0 - ew, this dude's not very good. Made one glaringly idiotic play when we had possession at the end of the match (holding a 1-0 lead) and just played the ball out of bounds for no apparent reason. Maybe he can turn into something, I don't know, there's gotta be a reason Wenger's playing him right? Some thoughts on Man City - they defended well - a lot of good buildup from Arsenal did not result in too many clearcut chances. Their back four looked really good, the new guys, Corluka and Garrido looked good as fullbacks, but their centerback pairing is what really stood out. Micah Richards was solid, Richard Dunne exceptional. Schmeichel the second also looks like a great shot stopper in goal, though he did look shaky on crosses. Sven smartly used a counter-attack strategy and City actually looked dangerous on several occasions. Petrov was impressive while Mpenza and Elano (maybe off day?) were underwhelming. As for Arsenal, if not for Jens' error against Blackburn, we'd be off to the perfect start, but I'll take 2 wins, 1 tie in the league and a 2-0 road champions league win. I feel like this City game is the type of winnable home game that Arsenal would've drawn last year, so it was great to see them come away with 3 points. I'm not hopeful that we'll be challenging for the title, but anything's possible, and it certainly looks like we have a stronger team than Spurs who were supposed to take our champions league spot this season (granted Spurs have a had a ton of injuries in their defense, but Gallas, Eboue, Senderos, Sagna were all out against 100% record City and we still managed a clean sheet, so I take those excuses with a grain of salt).