Blackburn Rovers are a team designed to beat Arsenal. Despite their lack of results against the Gunners in recent years, I’ve always considered Blackburn away as one of the toughest fixtures on our schedule. We were going to be challenged physically, we were going to be challenged in the air; we were going to be challenged to stay tight defensively as Blackburn hoofed balls into the box like artillery fire from a distant destroyer. But on Saturday morning, before the sun had even come up on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, Arsenal destroyed anti-football.

As fat Sam Allardyce munched on Junior Mints for the entirety of the match, Arsene Wenger was the one left satisfied as Arsenal held on to a resilient 2-1 win on the road. This wasn’t a victory over Manchester United or Chelsea, but in some regards, I consider this to be as important as any win over the rest of the Big Four clubs in our hunt for the Premier League title. These are the types of matches we’ve struggled with in recent years, battling opposing tactics intended to frustrate and overwhelm our undersized defense. But not anymore, we showed a different quality on Saturday, a malleability that allowed our defense to bend but not break while our offense capitalized with precision on the counter.

Arsenal redefined themselves on Saturday. We stared down a team doing everything in its power to stop us offensively and punish us defensively, and we didn’t flinch. We were the ones with our heads held high after the final whistle. We were the ones who stayed strong as wave-after-wave of aerial assaults boomed into the box. Arsene Wenger, often criticized for his stubborn tactics and refusal to adjust to his opponent, showed another side, a smarter side, a counter-punching style that would’ve made Muhammad Ali smile in the 2-1 victory.

Anti-football was neutralized on Saturday, and here’s how Arsenal did it.

Offense

This wasn’t really a match about offense for us; it was a match about possession. In the first half, as Robin van Persie and Cesc Fabregas struggled to find their feet, we were sloppy in possession and put our defense under considerable pressure from misplaced passes. From the fifth minute up until Theo Walcott’s magnificent goal, Arsenal looked like they were about to break. Cesc cleared a ball off the line on a corner kick, and Manuel Almunia expertly palmed a ball off of his line before crashing into his own post. Yes, I just used “expertly” to describe Manuel Almunia.

Those 10 minutes, however, were so utterly critical for Arsenal to weather. Had the storm swarmed over our goal in that first 20 minutes, as it’s done so many times before, the rest of the game would’ve finished entirely different. I’m convinced of that. We played so rushed prior to Theo’s goal, so sloppy and rushed, because Blackburn were controlling possession of the ball and our players were visibly frustrated with the lack of space and time to play our style of football. Once space opened up in midfield and our defense settled down, thanks to yeoman-like work from Alex Song in maintaining possession and stamping out budding attacks and Thomas Vermaelen going “Terminator” on the entire Blackburn team, that’s when Arsenal regained control of the match. We sacrificed the brazen attacks that led to careless turnovers for more measured ball movement. We were patient, smart, and careful to maintain composure, and it paid off in the 20th minute as Theo Walcott once again showed clinical brilliance, lashing a ball into the far corner past an outstretched Paul Robinson for a 1-0 lead. Guess the Wizard of Oz finally gave him a brain, right Alan Hansen?

It was the perfect response to Blackburn’s anti-football tactics — pushing Christopher Samba further up the field and out of position while crowding the Arsenal half with lengthy runs by their quickly-tiring fullbacks — that once Cesc grabbed hold of the ball, deep in our own half, and began the quick pinball touch-passing toward the Blackburn goal (Cesc to Song to Arshavin to RVP to Walcott … whew), they were incapable of responding to the speed and precision of our counter-attack. It was classic Arsenal, and it certainly woke Blackburn up from their bullied expectations for the match.

The second half turned into an Arsenal pass-fest that put Blackburn completely on their heels. Cesc sunk his teeth into the match and began to dictate the middle of the pitch with world-class poise, running Blackburn’s defense ragged early in the second half as they tried to keep up with Arsenal’s clever passing. We used pace down the flanks and patience down the spine to neutralize Blackburn entirely, and Wenger’s 4-2-3-1 formation worked magic with Alex Song and Abou Diaby drifting in and out of the defensive formation to occasionally support the offensive push (Song especially had a stand-out match, supporting Laurent Koscielny in defense, policing the midfield with tremendous success, and still constantly popping up in attack). Blackburn were forced to drop deeper into their own half to combat Arsenal’s tactics, they really looked a bit confounded by the formation alone in the second half, which allowed our defense to set a high line, just a few yards beyond mid-field, and kept Blackburn offside and out-of-sync for the remainder of the match.

We finished off the Rovers early in the second half thanks to another smart run by Theo Walcott (of all people, Chris Waddle!). Walcott, sprinting down the right, picked up Sagna behind him with the ball in a little bit of space. Instead of sprinting off ahead or simply waiting for the ball, Theo, at full flight, cut down the middle of the pitch, dragging the fullback with him down the middle and opening up a cavern of space for Sagna to finish his run down the right. Sagna thumped a tidy cross into the box that ricocheted off Theo’s back, falling to Andrei Arshavin to slot home past Robinson. It was another beautiful counter-attack by the Arsenal and a well-earned game-winner for Arshavin, who hustled more in this one match than in the prior two combined.

It wasn’t a perfect offensive day, nor was it pretty, but it was certainly effective. And in this type of match, effective is exactly what was needed to walk away with a win.

Defense

This is where the real heroism played out. I watched this match three times (thank you, DVR), scribbling out notes like Hunter S. Thompson in a ratty old notebook, minus the drugs. Blackburn’s tactics were pretty obvious by Morten Gamst Pedersen’s first lengthy throw-in: They were going to put the ball a few yards out in front of Almunia and force him to react as bigger, stronger bodies punished our defenders inside. It should’ve worked, Almunia should’ve flapped at crosses and long balls like he normally does, and our defense should’ve struggled to communicate as another series of frustrating goals dribbled into the net.

But that’s not what happened.

Thomas Vermaelen had quite possibly the game of his career in this match. I didn’t notice it as much during the first watch through (lack of sleep and an abundance of nervousness), but by the third viewing, I realized that 99-percent of our defensive valor was a direct result of Vermaelen’s individual effort. Vermaelen was tasked with defending Samba in the box and sniffing out any long-ball attacks originating out of the Blackburn half, and his genius defensive play, initiating the aerial battle instead of waiting for the ball to come down to him, completely defused Samba’s height as Vermaelen was already up over his head before the Blackburn player could react.

Vermaelen also patrolled the defensive line like a soldier, allowing the other defenders to drift forward in attack or to mark one of the two Dioufs (usually successful aside from Koscielny’s shocker … more on that in a bit). Every time Blackburn would try to put a long ball forward or change the dimension of their attack, Vermaelen showed up to head the ball out of bounds. His head was continuously on a swivel for the full 90 minutes of the match. In midfield, in the box, and on corners and free kicks. Vermaelen was there, looking for his man, looking for someone to mark, looking for gaps in the defense, shoring up weaknesses and covering the posts. It was absolutely perfect defending.

Pedersen had about 15 throw-ins in the first half alone, and Paul Robinson did the only thing he really does well and pumped free kicks from his own box into Arsenal’s domain. There was a lot of pushing and shoving going on in the penalty area, but upon closer inspection, Arsenal was out-strategizing Blackburn. Laurent Koscielny, back from suspension, matched up one-on-one with Nikola Kalinic in the box, leaving Vermaelen+1 to defend Samba. Those were the two height discrepancies for Arsenal, so being able to defend Kalinic straight-up allowed Arsenal to put one man in front of Samba and one behind, essentially “picking” (to use a basketball term) Samba from reaching the ball and allowing Vermaelen to beat Samba to the ball.

I have to give a shout out to Almunia too. For how embattled he’s been mentally and emotionally with the goalkeeper transfer saga going on at Arsenal, Manuel had a spectacular match. He was really spatially cognizant against Blackburn, coming off his line and snatching crosses and long-balls directly out of the air instead of hesitating in no man’s land. He had, dare I say, some serious composure on Saturday against a team doing everything they could to exploit his weaknesses. He may end up being our number one keeper for the remainder of the year (I’ve still got my fingers crossed, Arsene), so it’s good to see a performance like that when we really needed some resolve between the posts. He even half-headbutted El-Hadji Diouf, something I’ve wanted to do for years, after the always-explosive forward went a bit mental and half-headbutted Almunia for, I don’t know, saving a shot? Anyway, that’s the type of GTFO attitude that we need in goal. Someone who’ll stomp on a foot or shove a blocking forward out of the way. Maybe there’s a pulse in there after all.

Now, back to the defending that led to Blackburn’s 27th minute goal. I would’ve expected us to give up a goal from a set-piece or from a long-ball against Blackburn, but I never would’ve expected us to give up a goal the way we did. There were two massive errors that led to the goal, and at this level, neither one should’ve happened. Koscielny beat El-Hadji Diouf in a footrace to a long ball down the left, but instead of tidying up the attack with a hard-nosed tackle or bodying up Diouf off the ball, Koscielny tried to poke the ball away and left himself, and his goal, entirely exposed. Meanwhile, on the far post (imagine a comic book panel right there, thanks), Gael Clichy turned into one of the 25,000 fans watching the match and decided to just stare at the ball. The other Diouf (Mame) was completely unmarked a few yards behind Clichy, but the Frenchman never once looked around to see if someone else was there. Surprise! Someone was, and the Diouf-to-Diouf pass finished with an open-net goal for Mame Diouf. Completely inexcusable.

I’m willing to give Koscielny a pass on that one, as his hesitancy going in hard for that tackle was probably spawned out of the ridiculous double-yellow he received against Liverpool for the same type of breakaway stopper, but Clichy has been a first-team regular for Arsenal for years now, he should know better than to leave his man unmarked on a bloody breakaway. It was the football equivalent of being pantsed, and I hope Clichy got the dressing down he deserved at halftime from Wenger.

In the end, it was a fantastic result for Arsenal. A 2-1 victory on the road against a team orchestrated to stifle us is the type of performance that I’ve been waiting to see from the Gunners. This is a team that can win a championship, this is a team that can contend, this is a team that showed not a frustrated attitude, but a rugged attitude, a survivalist’s mentality. If you give us a chance, we’ll take it. Arsenal killed anti-football on Saturday, there was a hard-edged glint to the team that hasn’t been there in years, and, when the sweat settled, Arsenal had won ugly the way championship teams have to do sometimes.

Let’s go do it again next week against Bolton.