10 Of The Best As Arsenal Beat Leicester

Arsenal faced Leicester last night as they looked to keep their winning run in all competitions going. They had won nine in a row which included six Premier League wins and a win would have brought them within two points of City and Liverpool. In a game that could have gone either way in the first half in particular they ended up winning 3-1 and they played some delightful football at times.

Unai Emery made two changes from the team which won 5-1 at Fulham in their last game two weeks ago. Stephan Lichsteiner came in for the injured Nacho Monreal and Mesut Ozil came back from his injury to replace Danny Welbeck who was on the bench. It meant Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was on the bench again despite scoring twice when he came on for the last 20 minutes in that game against Fulham.

The first half belonged more to Leicester than Arsenal as they continually got behind our high line and we were probably lucky on a couple of occasions that they didn’t score. When their goal came it was a trifle unfortunate as a scuffed cross from Ben Chilwell clipped Hector Bellerin to roll past Bernd Leno into an empty net. Leno had done very well up to then to keep Leicester out, but there was very little he could do about the goal.

That goal sparked Arsenal into life and they scored in the crucial last few moments of the half. In a flowing move down the right Ozil played a huge part in the build up and he was on hand to guide a cross from Bellerin into the corner of the net via the far post. It was a typical Ozil finish and it was exactly what the team needed to set them up for the second half.

Arsenal came out in a much more positive fashion in the second half and Leicester were very quickly doing everything they could to try to slow the game down and take the sting out of Arsenal. It looked more and more likely that we would go on to win, but there was a scare when a header from a Leicester corner hit the bar with Leno struggling badly to get anywhere near it. The boss decided it was time to change things on the hour mark and his substitutions worked almost immediately.

Aubameyang and Matteo Guendouzi came on for Lichsteiner and Henrikh Mkhitaryan which meant Granit Xhaka was playing at left back. It was a bold move considering Xhaka was already on a yellow card, but he did very well in that position for the rest of the match. To be honest Arsenal were in so much control Xhaka didn’t have an awful lot of defending to do and within six minutes of making the changes they were 3-1 up.

The first of those goals came at the end of a flowing move when Aubameyang was on hand to tap the ball home from another Bellerin cross after more great play from Ozil. Before Leicester even knew what was happening they were two behind when Aubameyang was again on hand to finish off a magnificent move in which Ozil was sublime. I don’t think I could find the words to describe how great it was to watch that move as it was a thing of absolute beauty.

I don’t subscribe to those who say we’re getting our Arsenal back though and I think it’s more than a little disrespectful to Arsene Wenger. The football they claim we are getting back is the football he brought to the club, but it was time for him to go though. We’re on a great run at the monent and I’m really enjoying it, but I’m not naive enough to believe we are anywhere near the finished article.

We have some pretty tough challenges coming up and they might not go as well as things are going at the moment, but our current run is absolutely fantastic. Our second half against Leicester was probably the best we’ve played so far this season, but the first half left a lot to be desired. We won’t get away with playing like that against the better teams in the league and we’re going to be facing three of them over the next six weeks.

We still have an awful lot of work to do defensively, but we are getting better in attack with each game. We have some very good finishers in our team and they are proving to be the difference between us and the opposition at the moment. If we can improve our defence we have a real chance of finishing in the top four and qualifying for the Champions League and that has to be our first priority this season.

Our third goal reminded me of my favourite song by The Cure which goes by the name of “How Beautiful You Are.” Every time I watch it again I can’t help smiling and I just want to watch it again and again. As good as Aaron Ramsey’s goal was against Fulham, I thought that goal was so much better and the parts Ozil played in it were fantastic.

We’re off to Portugal on Thursday night to play Sporting in our Europa League group. It looks like the group is between us and them already and the results of our games against them should decide who wins the group. At the moment the Europa League is all about getting through to the knock out stages while keeping our first choice players out of the picture as much as possible.

Playing in the Premier League on a Monday night is hardly ideal preparation for a trip to Portugal on a Thursday night, but the manager will be making a fair few changes for that game. He might not have too many options in defence at the moment, but he should be able to put out a fairly strong team. It will be interesting to see if he goes with a slightly stronger team in this game than he did in the other two group games as Sporting will definitely be tougher opponents. I’ll look into that a little more in my preview of the game on Wednesday.

That’s it for today.

See you tomorrow.