Hull City 1 - 2 Arsenal: Excuse Me, I Have to Feed the Meter

He's done it again! Pic via Sky Sports.

Hull City 1: Bullard 28 (pen)

Arsenal 2: Arshavin 14, Bendtner 90+3

We have a bit of an inside joke here at Hipster Gooner that straddles the line of superstition. Whenever Max would drive to Nevada Smith's, usually meaning he was coming in from out of the city for the game, he'd be forced to park his car in a metered spot. This would mean at some point during the match, he would have to step out of the bar during play to put quarters in the meter. It seemed that Arsenal would always score while Max was outside feeding the meter. For instance, he was out when the Gunners struck twice in 50 seconds against Spurs back on Halloween (which was part of one of our many stay-out-all-night-Friday-because-the-game-is-so-early-Saturday adventures.) Recently, Max has not been driving to Nevada's, so any time the opposition scores, he'll say he needs to go feed the meter with tongue firmly in cheek. But, he did drive yesterday.

Things did not look to be set up well for a big Arsenal win: Cesc Fabregas was out, still nursing a hamstring injury. Alex Song was serving the final game of his two match suspension for accumulation. The pitch at the KC Stadium in Hull was not in the best condition for Arsenal's crisp passing game, having hosted a recent rugby match; the rugby lines were still painted on the grass. Tomas Rosicky was out with a groin injury, while Bacary Sagna and Sol Campbell on defense were both not 100%. Plus, there's a growing bit of fire between these two sides.

It doesn't help that Arsenal always leaves it until late to push winners by Hull. It took an hour for Arsenal to feel comfortable with a lead against Hull at the Emirates in December. The Gunners trailed for a much of their sixth-round FA Cup tie last year before van Persie equalized in the 74th and Gallas won it in the 84th. Nasri's winner at the KC Stadium last year came in the 82nd.

Arsenal struck first, in the 14th minute, on a classy play by Andrei Arshavin, who appeared to have picked up where he left off against Porto Tuesday. He slipped himself and the ball between two Hull defenders in the area, then pounded it past Myhill into the lower corner. One-nil to the Arsenal in the first quarter hour for the second straight game.

Hull, however, earned a controversial (from every possible angle) equalizer in the 28th, against the run of play. A through ball was played over the shoulder of Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink, who streaked past Sol Campbell with ease, because he was already offside. Dutchy of Dutch pushed the ball forward toward goal and then got a bit tangled with Campbell and went down. Hull was awarded a penalty, on which Almunia guesses right but still has no chance and Bullard converted to tie the score.

So, should it have been a penalty? First off, no, because the crazy named striker was offside to begin with. Then, I'm not entirely convinced he was in possession when Campbell took him down; apparently Andre Marriner wasn't either (then why give the penalty?) Campbell's challenge was not terrible, but clumsy, yes. To make matters more interesting, Campbell was booked for the challenge. If you're going to book him, shouldn't it have been straight red? Under those circumstances, that stands as a professional foul, no? In the end though, if he were onside, yes, I think it's a penalty. But he wasn't.

Then things took a nasty turn, like it always does with Arsenal and Hull. Dawson was booked for a terribly late challenge on Denilson, Boateng was booked for poking Bendtner in the eye (that could have been straight red too) and then Bendtner was booked too. Then Boateng was booked again, and thus sent off, for a studs-up-and-high challenge on Sagna. That one probably should have been straight red as well. Yes, he was sent off anyway, but the suspension is less severe with Marriner's decision to give the second yellow and not straight red.

Hull was forced to play the second half on 10 men, and did a pretty good job of it. Campbell could've received a second yellow for a challenge on Zayatte; from one angle it was a terrible challenge, but from the other, you could see that Campbell won the ball first, just barely. Three minutes later, Campbell avoided trouble again, and got away with a potentially close handball. After another Hull injury, it was apparent that there would be a lot of added time at the end. Remember that.

Theo Walcott came on in the 66th minute, giving Arsenal much needed pace against a team down to 10 men (why didn't Wenger make that move sooner?) and the Gunners nearly went ahead, but Arshavin, with all the time and space in the world, hurried a shot into the stands. With that, it looked like the go-ahead-goal would never come for Arsenal.

Back in the Hipster Gooner world at Nevada Smith's it was the 88th minute of a 1-1 game with title asperations hanging in the balance and Max decided he needed to feed the meter. There would be six minutes of added time.

An Eduardo cross was sent out for a corner, the corner was then cleared out. A Sagna cross was headed out by one of the 10 men Hull had guarding the box. A Clichy shot was caught easily by Myhill. Then Denilson fired a shot from distance that looked like it would never challenge Myhill, a keeper that has stolen points from Chelsea, Tottenham, and Man City in the past two months. At the last second, the shot seemed to swerve, and Myhill could not handly it cleanly and it bounced ahead of him. All second half long, a Hull defender was there to clear problems like this, as they were desperately playing for the draw on 10 men.

This time, it was Nicklas Bendtner standing there to pound the loose ball home. 93rd minute. 2-1 Arsenal.

Hull could not steal another point at home. They are still in extreme danger of relegation to the Championship. Arsenal snatched two extra points in the dying minutes to keep their title hopes alive. For all of the times Arsenal has been written off by the media this year (usually after losing to Chelsea) this really felt like it would have been it. For now, the Gunners are alive, and we'll keep feeding that parking meter.