Gilberto’s well-timed strike, two minutes into stoppage time, broke Bolton Wanderers’ resistance and gained Arsenal a valuable point, after the Gunners had fallen behind to Kevin Nolan’s goal in the twelfth minute, before Premiership points were eventually shared in a 1-1 draw at Highbury on Saturday.
The Trotters started the game brightly with Nolan testing Arsenal goalkeeper Jens Lehmann, and they came close to scoring in the second minute, when Joey O’ Brien’s cross from the left flank was met by a cushion header from Bruno N’ Gotty, and with Lehmann beaten, the ball took a wicked bounce against the corner of the left hand crossbar.
But there was no reprieve ten minutes later, as Matt Jansen rode off the challenge from Philippe Senderos, before laying the ball to Nolan, who, with the outside of his left foot, drove an unstoppable shot into the roof of the net. Abdoulaye Faye escaped with a yellow card in the thirtieth minute, after digging his heels into Jose Antonio Reyes, that resulted in the Arsenal striker being taken off on a stretcher, and replaced by Robert Pires. Thus began Arsenal’s second half onslaught, with a free kick which Jaaskelainen saved in the fifty-eighth minute, who again dived at full stretch to keep out Pires’s dipping shot in the seventy-eighth minute.
Two minutes later, the Bolton goalkeeper was kept busy, as Jaaskelainen kept out Francesc Fabregas at close range and then prevented Johan Djourou’s goal-bound header.
With the Trotters hanging on, Jaaskelainen stopped Gilberto’s stinging shot in the eighty-sixth minute, and then Nicky Hunt almost turned the ball into his own net, after Thierry Henry, miss-timed his shot. The pressure eventually took its toll, as the Gunners grabbed a last grasp equaliser when Fabregas delivered a carefully measured chip, which was met by Gilberto’s in-swinging shot, that flew past Jaaskelainen, into the bottom left hand corner. Ricardo Gardner came to Bolton’s rescue as he headed-off Henry’s goal bound effort on the stroke of full time.
”Well, I feel we had a little bit of an edgy start because we are very young, you know, and you could feel that from the start on, and so we put ourselves a little bit under trouble, but progressively in the game, we took over, and in the second half it was one way traffic. I didn’t see Bolton coming out of their half, and we should have won this game comfortably,” said Arsenal’s manager, Arsene Wenger.
Despite this, Bolton Wanderers’ manager, Sam Allardyce, was not content, as he commented: ”When you’re in the dressing room, and quite sick that you’ve ended up with a draw not a victory, it shows how far as a football club and a team that we’ve come, and I think the good thing today was all but winning the game. We tried to take full advantage of Arsenal’s problems at the back today, and sadly didn’t see that through in the first half with the amount of chances we created, and in the end we’ve paid the price for that today sadly, so a great performance but the wrong result.”