Brentford (0) 0 Arsenal (0) 1
Premier League
Gtech Community Stadium, Lionel Road South, Brentford TW8 0RU
Saturday, 25th November 2023. Kick-off time: 5.30pm
(4-3-3) Aaron Ramsdale; Takehiro Tomiyasu, William Saliba, Gabriel Magalhães, Oleksandr Zinchenko; Martin Ødegaard (c), Declan Rice, Leandro Trossard; Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Jesus, Gabriel Martinelli.
Substitutes: Ben White, Eddie Nketiah, Jakob Kiwior, Cédric Soares, (Jorge Luiz Frello Filho) Jorginho, Reiss Nelson,Mohamed Elneny, Kai Havertz, Karl Hein.
Scorers: Kail Havertz (89 mins)
Yellow Cards: Gabriel Martinelli
Arsenal Possession Percentage: 64%
Referee: Tim Robinson
Assistant Referees: Eddie Smart, Nick Greenhalgh
Fourth Official: Josh Smith
VAR Team at Stockley Park: VAR Michael Salisbury; AVAR Wade Smith
Attendance: 17,201
Aaron Ramsdale will be our goalkeeper for tonight’s match, replacing David Raya who is on loan from Brentford and therefore ineligible to play, whilst Fábio Vieira is suspended having received a red card in the game against Burnley on 11th November.
Gabriel Jesus is returning for this match and club captain Martin Ødegaard, who has now recovered from concussion which was suffered by him on the training pitch a couple of weeks ago, is also resuming his place in tonight’s line-up.
Ben White is on the substitute’s bench, but Emile Smith-Rowe, Jurrien Timber and Thomas Partey are still unavailable for selection due to injury.
There is an absolutely electric atmosphere tonight at the Gtech for this London derby, and as such, the early exchanges are both frenetic and physical.
After an early free-kick which saw Gabriel Martinelli heading wide, the match started to settle down into a close contest between N5 and TW8. The home side are truly holding their own at this stage of the game, and they could be a tough nut to crack for our boys tonight. From a Bukayo Saka corner, Leandro Trossard blasted the ball way over the Brentford bar, and after a horrendous mistake by Aaron Ramsdale, which saw Declan Rice saving the day by clearing the ball off the goalline, we woke up a bit and started to knock the ball around in the Brentford half.
Referee Tim Robinson had a word with our captain over possible time wasting when we were due to take a corner, and it was becoming obvious to everyone that we have to get a grip on this game extremely quickly indeed.
After some midfield pressure, we had a chance to score when Gabriel Jesus hit a shot high and wide after the home team failed to deal with our attack properly with a cross sent over to him by Oleksandr Zinchenko. Unbelievably, Aaron Ramsdale almost gave them another chance to score, when he threw the ball into the ground when he meant to get it well clear of his area. He certainly was not happy with himself and slammed his hands together in frustration.
Four minutes before the break, a Gabriel Jesus shot took a huge deflection off Ethan Pinnock and looped into the air with goalkeeper Mark Flekken saving it acrobatically before it dropped neatly into the top corner of the net.
A minute later, Bukayo Saka lifted the ball onto the head of Gabriel Jesus, whose neat header was parried by Mark Flekken straight into the air, and into the path of Leandro Trossard, who nodded the ball in from close range; but unfortunately the goal was disallowed after a VAR check due to our goalscorer being offside (allegedly), and so both sides went into the half-time break honours even.
A minute or so after the restart, extremely poor defending from Brentford saw the ball getting to Bukayo Saka, who crossed it and found Martin Ødegaard, who somehow diverted the ball wide at the near post. A bit of a messy start to the second half for both teams, but it can only get better. Can’t it?
There was a chance for the home side to score when Bryan Mbeumo shot wide from an extremely tight angle, and then Gabriel Martinelli got booked for a late tackle a couple of minutes later, which was a bit silly to be fair.
The match started to go somewhat flat, and after some good attempts to score that went nowhere, Eddie Nketiah replaced Gabriel Jesus after sixty-five minutes; let’s hope that these substitutions fire the boys up now. Ben Mee stopped a cross reaching Eddie Nketiah, who would have surely scored, and as the game trundled on, it really needed a goal from us to liven things up a bit.
A snap long-range shot from Yehor Yarmoliuk went straight to the arms of Aaron Ramsdale, who easily gathered the ball up, and then we nearly went a goal down when a header from Neal Maupay was cleared off the line by Oleksandr Zinchenko who completely saved our blushes. With about ten minutes of the match remaining, Kai Havertz replaced Gabriel Martinelli, and almost immediately we started to play better and quicker with some great movement and ideas.
William Saliba, who has had a superb game tonight, hit a ball from about twenty yards which went just wide of the goal, and with a minute of normal time left on the clock, a lovely ball from Bukayo Saka out on the right was met at the far post by Kai Havertz, whose header hit the back of the net for us to take the lead! In the four minutes injury time awarded, Mikel Arteta brought on Jorginho and Ben White for Martin Ødegaard and Bukayo Saka in order to get some fresh legs on the pitch as the home side started to put us under pressure; it made no difference whatsoever as we held out to take maximum points and a well-deserved return to the top of the Premiership table tonight.
What a game at the Gtech this evening.
The result totally showed our determined character and desire to win, as we kept going, chipping sway, finding a hole in their defence. And it came; it really does not matter if it was a minute from time or thirty minutes from the end of the game, resilience and character won out in the end, as we know so many times from our illustrious history. William Saliba and Gabriel were rock solid at the back, Declan Rice was superb and although Aaron Ramsdale was nervous at first, he grew in confidence as the match continued.
Eventually we broke down the well-drilled Brentford defence, and showed our Premiership credentials by never giving up, patiently waiting for that one single chance to win the game. And it came. Well done, chaps.
Remember everyone, keep the faith, get behind the team and the manager, as this season is going to be crucial for our future success in all competitions. Stick with the winners. Our next match: RC Lens at the Emirates on Wednesday, 29th November at 8.00pm (Champions League). Be there, if you can. Victoria Concordia Crescit.
Steve
Too Dearly Loved To Be Forgotten: Arsenal v Racing Club de Paris 1930-1962 by Steve Ingless (Rangemore Publications, ISBN 978-1-5272-0135-4) is now available on Amazon
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 
That was a proper arm wrestle. Reminded me of the 90/91 team, never really looked like losing and just about edged it. Brentford are a big, strong, well coached side and large parts of that game were played on their terms but we stood up to the challenge and found a way to win. Massive result that.
Saliba, Big Gabi and Rice were outstanding, if those 3 stay fit all season then we`ll be very competitive at the business end of the season. Rice is just immense, I always knew he was a top notcher at West Ham but he`s even better than I thought. His levels never seem to drop.
Hopefully, that`s the last time we see Trossard in the 8 role though, I know he had one disallowed but he just looked lost in there. It was no surprise to see him come more into the game when he switched out wide. Its unusual for Arteta but I thought it took him too long to make that change. No doubt, he`ll argue the way the game panned out proved him right.
I`ll finish with Havertz, I think he`s a good player and has the potential to take the team to a different level but until yesterday, it just wasn`t happening for him. You could never doubt his attitude or work rate though, He also offer us good physicality, hopefully he can nick himself another goal on Wednesday and get on a bit of a roll. He looks like a bit of a confidence player, I`m sure that if he bags a few goals you`ll see a different type of player altogether.
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