“If Arteta remove that particular player from his squad and they did not win the league this season, hold me responsibile…As a professional coach we shouldn’t be doing as if we have problem among ourselves”: Leicester coach names ONE Arsenal player who doesn’t deserve to wear the club’s jersey
“If Arteta remove that particular player from his squad and they did not win the league this season, hold me responsibile…As a professional coach we shouldn’t be doing as if we have problem among ourselves”: Leicester coach names ONE Arsenal player who doesn’t deserve to wear the club’s jersey
Make no mistake, we absolutely dominated Leicester but it just goes to show that there are no easy fixtures in the Premier League.
Before the game against Leicester City on Saturday afternoon, I believe anyone of an Arsenal affiliation would have been expecting us to utterly walk over the newly promoted side with a comfortable scoreline to show for it.
45 minutes in and we were on the right track for doing just that with goals from the lively Gabriel Martinelli and Leandro Trossard giving us a comfortable 2-0 lead heading into the half time break. The first goal will come as a huge relief to Martinelli given he squandered a very good chance minutes earlier to put us into the lead, he took his goal expertly though from an assist by Jurrien Timber.
He then turned provider for Trossard right before half time, with the Belgian slotting home our second of the game to give us a much deserved lead which our constant pressure on the Leicester backline fully deserved.
Everyone including the Leicester support would have thought the game was done after the first half (I did!), however the Foxes were given hope just a minute after the interval, in what was one of their very few attacks in the game. At that point Saliba fouled Jamie Vardy deep into our own half with the yellow card shown to our Frenchman being not the only punishment for the foul, because what resulted from the subsequent freekick was a goal from James Justin headed into the back of the net via a kind deflection from Kai Havertz.
Arsenal would have still fancied their chances of smashing them given it was more of a fluke goal more than anything else, but we were reminded a little later why this League can be so unforgiving, a goal from Justin again drawing things level. This time again Raya could not do anything about it because it was an absolute banger, Trossard could have done better with tracking back, however it was still a quality strike.
From a game which most us thought would be a comfortable kickabout turned into scrappy win at the end, when Trossard forced an own goal off Wilfred Ndidi in the 93rd minute of stoppage time.
We added our fourth a few minutes later from a counter attack through Kai Havertz. Make no mistake we dominated them from start to finish even though we only managed to win it torwards the latter stages of the match. Just to get a glimpse of our dominance through the stats, we registered a whopping 36 shots with 16 being on target while also having 17 corners to Leicester’s none in the game, also add to the fact that we were always reactive in winning the ball back when we lost it throughout the game, then you can easily see why we were so dominant in the game.
We still left if late for a win though which will tell us that you cannot underestimate the opposition no matter the run or form their on, today was another reminder that we’ll have to earn the right to be called title contenders even though we’ve shown at the home of the reigning champions that we are more than capable. Just looking back to last season where we lost back to back games against weaker opposition(West Ham and Fulham), a loss or even a draw against the Foxes today might have the same consequences that those two losses had on title hopes at the end of the season.
There are so many positives to take away from this game and one pretty minor one is that we cannot forget that three points are NOT a given in the Premier League. I know they are pretty much aware of this but it’s importance cannot be overemphasized still.
