EPL, Premiership, English Premier League

Arsenal abandoned their hopes for the League title today; their last chance at the title vanished when they played Manchester United and lost 2-1. They are 9 points behind United now with only 4 games left in the season. Adebayor scored one for Arsenal in the 48th minute but in the 54th minute William Gallas handed the ball in the penalty box and Ronaldo equalized with the penalty. With all the opportunities Adebayor had he have should have scored at least twice. United took the lead in the 72nd minute with a free kick from Hargreaves from 25 yards out. Lehman was in for Arsenal as keeper and didn’t move an inch. But he wasn’t to blame, Ronaldo and Hargreaves both stood behind the ball and Hargreaves took it; the ball curved over the Arsenal wall and slid in inches from the post. While both sides had multiple opportunities Arsenal wasn’t able to finish; Bendtner didn’t bring enough quality to the field and even Adebayors goal was suspect as the ball may have touched his hand before going in the goal.

“Yes we are out” said Wenger; “We played with quality and spirit, and I’m very proud of our performance. What can you do? We had plenty of chances and we were really unlucky not to win. The last two months, we have been not very lucky - and you could see that again, It’s difficult to find an obvious reason when you see that performance today. We had a dip since March and we need to look at why, but the biggest target is to keep the team together.”

Defender Rio Ferdinand said that United hadn’t won the title yet, “There are more points to be played for, the title is not handed out yet. We have not many times been a goal down at home but we came back. We showed pure grit and determination and a great team ethic. We were maybe fortunate with the penalty but in the second half we looked more like scoring.’

Owen Hargreaves was interviewed after his sensational free-kick. “That’s a good distance for me so I didn’t ask him [Ronaldo]. It was an open game in the first half, too open, the distances were too big and we had to do a lot of running,’ he added. ‘Arsenal were the better team in the first half but we had chances too. We needed to tighten up and we did.”