Category Archives: Arsenal

MATCH REPORT: Luton Town 3 – 4 Arsenal

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Luton Town (1) 3 Arsenal (2) 4

Premier League

Kenilworth Road, 1 Maple Rd East, Luton LU4 8AW

Tuesday, 5th December 2023. Kick-off time: 8.15pm

(4-3-3) David Raya; Ben White, William Saliba, Gabriel Magalhães, Jakob Kiwior; Martin Ødegaard (c), Declan Rice, Kai Havertz; Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Jesus, Gabriel Martinelli.

Substitutes: Aaron Ramsdale; Eddie Nketiah, Cédric Soares, Leandro Trossard, (Jorge Luiz Frello Filho) Jorginho, Reiss Nelson, Mohamed Elneny, Oleksandr Zinchenko, Reuell Walters.

Scorers: Gabriel Martinelli (20 mins), Gabriel Jesus (45 mins), Kai Havertz (60 mins), Declan Rice (90+7 mins)

Yellow Cards: Gabriel Jesus

Arsenal Possession Percentage: 67%

Referee: Sam Barrott

Assistant Referees: Harry Lennard, Nick Hopton

Fourth Official: Darren Bond

VAR Team at Stockley Park: VAR Chris Kavanagh; AVAR Lee Betts

Attendance: c.11,500

For tonight’s game, Oleksandr Zinchenko and Leandro Trossard have been dropped to the substitute’s bench as Jakub Kiwior, Ben White and Kai Havertz come in. Unfortunately, Takehiro Tomiyasu, Thomas Partey, Emile Smith-Rowe, Fabio Vieira and Jurrien Timber remain unavailable for selection due to their respective injuries. On a congratulatory note, Bukayo Saka is set to make his two hundredth appearance for Arsenal in all competitions, at Kenilworth Road this evening. Aged 22 years and 91 days, he would become the second youngest English player to reach the milestone for Arsenal, bettered only by the legendary Cliff Bastin back in 1934.

We kicked off proceedings here at Kenilworth Road on a cold December evening, with both sets of players moving at quite a fast pace indeed. Gabriel kicked a ball forward extremely strongly, but the Luton goalkeeper Thomas Kaminski gathered up the ball just before Gabriel Jesus could get to it. Gabriel Martinelli went to the floor following a bad tackle from Teden Mengi; he carried on, but it appeared that he had problems with his back. The home side were extremely physical in going about their business, with several of our players being badly fouled within the first ten minutes of the game. The physicality of the general nature of the match meant that there was no real chances in the first fifteen minutes of the game, as our boys were trying to find a way through the home side’s close marking style of play. However, after twenty minutes of play, we finally found a breakthrough when a poor Luton back pass saw goalkeeper Thomas Kaminski clear the ball into touch, but it bounced back off the advertising hoardings; Gabriel Jesus took a quick throw-in, finding Bukayo Saka who pulled it back and Gabriel Martinelli simply guided it into the bottom corner, just inside the post. Sadly our lead didn’t last too long, as four minutes later, Gabriel Osho equalised with a header from a corner. Shortly afterwards, Gabriel Jesus nearly restored our lead, when Martin Ødegaard, surrounded by Luton players, still managed to play it through to Gabriel Jesus who took a touch and quickly fired the ball at the goal, but the goalkeeper got a hand to it, and sent it behind for a corner, which came to nothing. Gabriel Jesus, on the left of the Luton penalty area, found a route to goal blocked so he passed a neat ball to Gabriel Martinelli and although it was a great strike, which was heading for the top corner, incidentally, goalkeeper Thomas Kaminski athletically got to the ball and clawed it away. So close. Declan Rice passed a lovely ball into the path of Bukayo Saka, whose left-footed shot from the right hand side of the penalty area was saved again by the goalie as it was heading for the top left corner of the net. Right on the stroke of half-time, we grabbed our second goal of the evening when Bukayo Saka released Ben White out on the right wing, and he quickly crossed the ball into the the middle of the penalty area, finding Gabriel Jesus, who simply nodded it into the net from close range; shortly afterwards our goalscorer received a yellow card for a silly tackle, but despite plenty of furious play from both teams in the five minutes injury time, we went into the break the better off of the two sides by the odd goal in three.

The home side started the second half in earnest, and this half had started in exactly the same way as the first ended, fiercely competitive. Four minutes after the restart, the home side scored the equaliser in the same manner as the first, courtesy of Elijah Adebayo. We immediately came back at them, with two good attempts by Bukayo Saka and Jakob Kiwior and after an excellent Kai Havertz header which just went over the crossbar, Ross Barkley scored the home side’s third goal with a left-footed shot from thje left side of the goal. However, on the hour, Luton had a throw-in, lost the ball and suddenly we sprang into life. The ball was played into the path of Gabriel Jesus and he slotted the ball towards the direction of Kai Havertz, who got there ahead of goalie Thomas Kaminski to steer it into the goal for our third of the evening. A few minutes later, Jakub Kiwior and Gabriel Martinelli made way for Oleksandr Zinchenko and Leandro Trossard and suddenly both sides were more competitive than ever. Our captain put a fierce shot into the Luton goal, which was saved well by the goalie with fifteen minutes of the game remaining, and a couple of minutes later, after some super work by Bukayo Saka out on the right wing, he passed the ball to Leandro Trossard, who disappointingly blasted the ball over the bar from close range. We had yet another penalty appeal turned down by VAR, and then a superb Ben White cross again found the head of Kai Havertz whose header went narrowly wide of the left-hand post. With four minutes of the match remaining, some clever passing play found Leandro Trossard, whose right-footed shot went narrowly wide of the post. In the six minutes injury time, there was some extremely strong play from both sides, facing some nervous defenders, but right at the death, just when everythjing pointed to a draw, Declan Rice headed the ball into the back of the net past Thomas Kaminski from captain Martin Ødegaard’s cross from outside the penalty area! Unbelievable!

What an ending! What a team! Time just seemed to stand still at the end of the game as Declan Rice’s header went into the back of the net. A superb performance from the boys, they showed plenty of guts and fortitude, even at times when things looked a bit dodgy out there. They never gave up, kept going, right until the final whistle. And the icing on the cake is that we are five points ahead of Liverpool tonight, which is magnificent. 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: Aston Villa at Villa Park on Saturday, 9th December at 5.30pm (Premier 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

Poor finishing against Wolves shows Arsenal need to recruit another striker

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It could have been more. It should have been more. But as Mikel Arteta said, football is not always perfect.

Against Lens, we had 14 shots, 8 on target. We scored 6 goals from an xG of 2.56. We were clinical. The xG against Wolves was 3.30, we had 19 shots with 6 on target. We scored just twice.

Lens was pretty much a perfect attacking performance. Against Wolves, some brilliant attacking play was let down by poor finishing.

Leandro Trossard twice went clean through, and twice tamely hit it at the keeper. Eddie Nketiah also missed a one on one, striking the post. Gabriel Martinelli hit the post with a fantastic curling shot and Gabriel Jesus should have knocked one in from a similar position as to what Kai Havertz scored in against Brentford.

Some will say that the Wolves performance shows we need a more clinical striker, pointing our the basic stat of zero goals and zero assists for Gabriel Jesus. But the Brazilian hasd a superb game.

He held the ball up well, creating space for Bukayo Saka’s first goal, and then played a sublime pass whidh enabled Olexsandr Zinchenko to assist for Martin Odegaard’s second. And this is why sometimes you need to ignore goal and assist stats.

Jesus was key in both goals, yet comes away from the game without adding to his G/A for the season and has now scored just 1 in 9 Premier League games this season.

Were we to sign a more clinical striker, the net result could be that we worse in attack.

Jesus comes deep, goes wide. His movement, vision and play brings in Martinelli, Saka and Odegaard, who then profit.

We might not have had a 30-goal a season striker last season, but instead we have an attacking unit that scored more goals than any other Premier League season in our history.

That front 4 of Jesus, Saka, Martinelli and Odegaard scored 55 Premier League goals between them last year. Erling Haaland, Phil Foden, Kevin de Bruyne and Jack Grealish scored 59 combined.

City sacrifice goals elsewhere on the pitch to get the best out of Haaland. With 36 goals last year and the treble, it is easy to make the argument that it is the correct tactic for them. But there is only one Haaland in world football.

Across Europe’s top leagues last season, only 2 men scored 30 or more league goals – Halaand (36) and Harry Kane (30).

Kylian Mbappe (29), Alexandre Lacazette (27) and Victor Osimhen (26) were the only other men to score 25. They were followed by Jonathan David (24), Robert Lewandowski (23), Lautaro Martinez (21), Lois Openda (21) and Folarin Balogun (21) as the players to have scored over 20.

Of the 10 players to score more than 20-goals in 2022/23, 5 played in France. And one was Lacazette which highlights just how poor Ligue 1 is.

This highlights how few proven 20+ goal scorers there are across Europe, and other than Victor Osimhen, I am not sure any of the others would be worthwhile sacrificing Jesus’s all round play for.

This blog has been heavy about Jesus, but his wastefullness was certainly not the reason why we only scored 2 on Saturday. Trossard and Nketiah were the most guilty.

Trossard’s first came from a brilliant touch from himself. By the time the ball then dropped the keeper was right on him. Whilst clean through, it was not a clear chance.

His second he should have burried but, under pressure from the defender, he fluffed his lines. Like Jesus, Trossard is not a natural goal scorer (hence why he is a winger/ attacking midfielder), so you can make a case for his defence. Nketiah on the other hand is different.

Eddie’s key selling point is that he is a goal scorer, a finisher. He is not one that runs the channels, brings others into play or creates his own chances. He relies on passes like Martin Odegaard’s on Saturday to put him clean through and finish.

If scoring goals is your USP, then missing a one on one under zero pressure is inexcusable.

A few times this season when coming on, Nketiah has not really shown a willingness to close down. He comes on in the 70th minute and does not add energy to the front line. He looks like he has been playing for the previous 70 minutes, not sitting on the bench. And this lack of energy is as much as a concern as his finishing.

I think it is becomming clear and obvious that if we do not go for Osimhen, we need to focus on getting someone in that is in and around Jesus’s level, and an improvement on Nketiah. And for those currently saying “we should never have left Folarin Balogun leave”, the issue was he did not want to be second choice to Jesus. He wanted guaranteed starts. And that is the headache Arteta, Edu and the team face trying to get an upgrade on Eddie.

The issue has always been how many players who are better than Nketiah would move to Arsenal to sit on our bench? You certainly could not see an Ollie Watkins leaving Aston Villa for Arsenal. Likewise Lautaro Martínez would not leave Inter Milan without the assurances that he would be our first choice.

Ivan Toney looks a realistic target who, at nearly 28, might see joining The Arsenal to sit on our bench as his last chance to play for a team fighting at the top of the league, playing in the Champions League. Beyond that, any other name I look at feels like it would remain a risk. Nketiah would get 20+ goals in France, so those top scorers in Ligue 1 would not be a suitable option.

The issue at 2-nil and when you do not put your chances away is that you leave the door open to drop points if your opponents get one back. Wolves did that on Saturday and we ended up holding on for a win rather than cantering to victory like we did against Lens.

But we got the 3-points which took us 4 clear (having played a game more), and that is what was important.

We are beginning to pur in attack now. 6 against Lens and should have had 6 against Wolves. And Jesus returning to fitness is key to that. The goals will come, I am sure of that. But a bit like against Lens, it will be a variety of goal scorers rather than one blond haired blue eyed forward getting a hat trick every other game.

Eddie is an issue we need to resolve, either in January or in the summer. It is getting to the point where it is worthwhile considering taking a risk on someone playing at a lower level. An Akor Adams or Elye Wahi in France, or Santiago Giménez from Feyenoord.

Arteta and Edu are forward thinking enough to know where we can improve. They showed that with the signing of Declan Rice despite us already having Thomas Partey. They will know better competition for Jesus could be the key to take us up yet another level. But the question still remains as to who that Eddie replacement will be.

Keenos

Match report: Arsenal 2 – 1 Wolves

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Arsenal (2) 2 Wolverhampton Wanderers (0) 1

Premier League

Emirates Stadium, Drayton Park, London N5 1BU

Saturday, 2nd December 2023. Kick-off time: 3.00pm

(4-3-3) David Raya; Takehiro Tomiyasu, William Saliba, Gabriel Magalhães, Oleksandr Zinchenko; Martin Ødegaard (c), Declan Rice, Leandro Trossard; Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Jesus, Gabriel Martinelli.

Substitutes: Aaron Ramsdale, Ben White, Eddie Nketiah, Jakob Kiwior, Cédric Soares, (Jorge Luiz Frello Filho) Jorginho, Reiss Nelson, Mohamed Elneny, Kai Havertz.

Scorers: Bukayo Saka (6 mins), Martin Ødegaard (13 mins)

Yellow Cards: William Saliba

Arsenal Possession Percentage: 57%

Referee: Peter Bankes

Assistant Referees: Eddie Smart, Nick Greenhalgh

Fourth Official: Thomas Bramall

VAR Team at Stockley Park: VAR John Brooks; AVAR Neil Davies

Attendance: 60,262

For this afternoon’s important match against Wolverhampton Wanderers, our midfielder Fábio Vieira has undergone groin surgery recently, but sadly would have missed this match anyway through suspension; however, Thomas Partey, Emile Smith-Rowe and Jurrien Timber unfortunately remain sidelined with their respective injuries. Mikel Arteta has made only one change from last Tuesday’s match against RC Lens, and that is Leandro Trossard, who is preferred to Kai Havertz, who sits this game out today on the substitute’s bench.

We started quickly, with an urgency to take all three points today. The visitors started to get themselves together and were playing a posession-based, high press game, which should be interesting. After just six minutes, we took the lead when Bukayo Saka played the ball into the path of Gabriel Jesus who then found Takehiro Tomiyasu who quickly passed it back to Bukayo Saka; having being played through on the visitors’ goal, he made no mistake, blasting the ball into the net to open the scoring magnificently. Seven minutes later, we grabbed our second goal when Oleksandr Zinchenko rescued a wild and wayward pass and intelligently passed the ball inside the Wolves’ penalty area for our captain, who having received the ball in the centre of the box, made no mistake in burying the ball into the corner of the net from about fifteen yards from goal. Play was halted briefly when Wolves’ goalie José Sá was receiving treatment for a minor injury from a member of the Molineux medical team, and a couple of minutes later, Leandro Trossard got onto a Martin Ødegaard cross and his first touch almost took him through on goal, but José Sá was quick off his line to narrow the angle to block Leandro Trossard’s shot, but unfortunately the Wolves goalie’s injury was causing him distress, so substitute goalkeeper Daniel Bentley (formerly of Bristol City), to take his position between the sticks for the rest of the match. We look both confident and dominant this afternoon, and although the visitors do indeed have their moments, it is certainly very few and far between. Six minutes before the break, a Gabriel Martinelli shot hit the post, and as the ball came loose, Gabriel Jesus blasted it over the bar from close range. As referee Peter Bankes blew the whistle for the half-time hiatus, our dominance during the first half was there for all to see.

The second half got underway, and by the look of the early exchanges, Arsenal are carrying on exactly where they left off at the end of the first half. We had a penalty appeal when Gabriel Jesus was appeared to have been pushed in the penalty area, that was turned down by the match officials, and then completely out of the blue, Matheus Cunha twisted around in the penalty area, and fired in an effort which David Raya athletically palmed away at his near post. In the aftermath of this effort, Declan Rice was on hand moments later to stop another through ball falling to Matheus Cunha, and then Leandro Trossard’s left-footed shot from outside the penalty area was just a little bit too high and flew over the Wolves crossbar. The amount of space that our forwards are getting today is truly unbelievable, and as the crowd are willing our boys onwards and upwards, it is felt that in the stadium, a third goal appears somewhat inevitable now. An excellent right-footed shot by Declan Rice (beautifully assisted by Martin Ødegaard), from outside the penalty area went wide of the Wolves’ goal to the left-hand side. After our centre-back William Saliba received a yellow card for a silly tackle on Hwang Hee-Chan, Mikel Arteta made our first substitution of the afternoon when Eddie Nketiah replaced Gabriel Jesus with twenty-three minutes left of the game. A lovely Bukayo Saka shot curled and flew over the crossbar, and Ben White and Kai Havertz replaced an injured Takehiro Tomiyasu and Gabriel Jesus with about ten minutes of the game remaining. Yet again, we should have grabbed a third goal when Martin Ødegaard played in Leandro Trossard who went through on a one-on-one situation with goalkeeper Daniel Bentley, but he did very well to stop our man from scoring. Again. Totally against the run of play, the visitors got a goal back when Matheus Cunha capitalised on a mistake by Oleksandr Zinchenko to make things a little more worrying as the game ebbs away. A minute or so later, Eddie Nketiah was played through by Martin Ødegaard; he was one-on-one with the Wolves goalkeeper, but his strike cannoned out off the inside of the post and into play. Incredible! In the six minutes injury time period, Wolves claimed a penalty, but thankfully the VAR team at Stockley Park cancelled it out, as the ball clearly hit Gabriel’s thigh and bounced up and hit his arm. Phew. The visitors threw everything at us, and we defended deep with all of our players back behind the ball in order to stop the visitors grabbing that equalising goal, which we did, and we ran out worthy winners overall with a spirited two goals to one victory.

A superb victory by the chaps this afternoon, and it was a pity that their dominating play did not bring the reward of more goals, when by rights, it should have done. Bukayo Saka, Leandro Trossard and Gabriel Martinelli played very well, and maybe the only worrying point was the injury to Takehiro Tomiyasu, the results of which we will no doubt find out in time. The story of the stats tell us that we should have done far better than we did, but three points is the name of the game, and with four points clear of Manchester City, along with the joy that we are indeed top of the Premiership tonight, it was truly a good day at the office for everybody, players and supporters alike. 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: Luton Town at Kenilworth Road on Tuesday, 5th December at 8.15pm(Premier 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