On paper, Arsenal’s 6-0 victory over Charlton yesterday in a behind-closed-doors game at The Emirates looks bad. Yet, it doesn’t tell the full story nor shows a complete picture.
It was more of a run-through, training exercise for both sides and saw the Gunners put out a pretty much full-strength squad across both halves of the games. For Lee Bowyer, it was an opportunity to give his full squad a run-out and he fielded two separate starting XIs in each half.
Regardless of that, it was a stinging defeat with the highlight for Gunners fans being former Leeds United loanee Eddie Nketiah’s second-half hat-trick. Those three goals added gloss to a decent performance from Arsenal who are a week ahead in terms of training than their London counterparts.
It was also a game that led captain Jason Pearce to tweet this:
Twitter: Good experience playing against a top arsenal side at the emirates. Minutes in the bank and working towards the res… https://t.co/27nM1L6x9W (@jpearce05)
For Pearce, his takeaways from the game are twofold: experience and game time. Both are nigh on impossible to effectively create in ‘pure’ training – at least there was a competitive element about the game against the Gunners.
Addicks fans were obviously going to reply to both Pearce and the game in general. Here are some of the replies of fans to Pearce’s tweet.
The great escape starts now!!! We’re behind all of you. You got this!!!
— Daveboy_cafcnew (@cafcnew) June 6, 2020
Top man Jason COYR
— sean higgins (@seanhig04884844) June 7, 2020
El capatain!!
— Danny russell (@Dayru09488516) June 6, 2020
In more general terms, Charlton fans took to their own Twitter feeds with tweets about the games and the result.
Twitter: We concede 4 to Huddersfield and apparently conceding 6 to arsenal is a bad result. #cafc (@CafcFreddo)
Twitter: Why are some people stressing over 6-0 defeat to Arsenal 😂 It was literally a training game with coaches as refs a… https://t.co/FmMPd4kVVW (@leewootton93)
Twitter: @CAFCofficial @Arsenal Great to have football back even if it ended with a loss. Have missed seeing our boys! And s… https://t.co/RME0viJNfB (@valleyman1973)
Twitter: Minutes in the legs more important right now and the oppo won’t be arsenal quality but with our defensive frailty t… https://t.co/HQzpxPfodB (@freeCAFC)
In fairness, there are very few doom-n-gloom quotes about it being a thrashing. Indeed, those that veer to this tack do temper it in some way with a positive tint.
For the Addicks, it’s been a valuable lesson that they will put behind them as they ready themselves for a six-pointer game against a frail Hull City outfit.