After Spurs lost to Chelsea on Saturday it gave us the chance to move to within four points of fourth place and only three behind our local rivals. The teams fighting for the possible Champions League place that goes with fifth place are all packed very tightly and we just couldn’t miss an opportunity to get right amongst them. It wasn’t going to be easy though after our exploits on Thursday night in Greece where we got a very good away lead in our Europa League round of 32 leg.
Mikel Arteta made six changes from that game on Thursday night with Sead Kolasinac, Hector Bellerin, Dani Ceballos, Nicolas Pepe, Mesut Ozil and Eddie Nketiah all coming into the team. We got a fair idea of which players he sees as crucial to his plans with the five players who remained in the team and those five could be asked to do an awful lot between now and the end of the season.
I suppose Hector Bellerin and Bukayo Saka could be added to that list too, but he had good reasons for Bellerin not playing on Thursday and Saka not starting yesterday. Bellerin isn’t back too long since his injury and overplaying him could be dangerous while Saka is still only 18 and probably deserved a rest. As it was Saka was called on early in the game to replace the injured Kolasinac and the crowd were very happy with his introduction.
We were already 1-0 down at that stage after what can be best described as shambolic defending saw Everton take the lead inside the first minute. Dominic Calvert-Lewin did very well with his overhead finish, but I wasn’t the only one who thought VAR should have intervened as his foot made slight contact with the head of David Luiz which surely made it dangerous play. At least we had the full length of the game to make our comeback.
We didn’t really seem to be making much of an impression until Saka came and found Nketiah with a fantastic cross. The finish from Nketiah was pretty good too and we took control of the game for most of the rest of the first half. It didn’t take us too long to go ahead when Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang raced through to finish in Thierry Henry fashion after a fantastic pass from Luiz.
Unfortunately we pressed the self destruct button again in added time at the end of the first half. Maybe Richarlison’s studs were a bit high when he finished, but Bernd Leno probably could have done more to prevent the goal too. Everton had played well in the first half, but it took two errors from us for them to score their goals.
We started the second half even faster than Everton had started the first half as Aubameyang headed us in front again from a pinpoint Pepe cross. I hoped we would continue to press forward and add to our lead, but the players appeared to tire badly as the game progressed. I have no doubt Thursday night’s exploits played a part in that and I was happy we managed to hold on to our lead despite some scary moments.
We play our second leg against Olympiakos on Thursday night, but we don’t have a Premier League game this weekend because of the Carabao Cup Final. Our next four league games are against teams in the bottom half of the table and they give us a great opportunity to get right into the battle for the top four. We need to do everything we can to win those four games if we are to have any chance of qualifying for next season’s Champions League through the usual route.
It’s quite amazing that Aubameyang is now the joint leading scorer in the Premier League as he’s part of an Arsenal team who are still searching to find their attacking identity. Until yesterday they had improved defensively under Arteta, but at least they managed to find a way to win the game when their defending let them down. Players are stepping up when the team needs it and it really looks like we’re beginning to find an identity as a team. There’s a long way to go and the squad needs to be strengthened in the summer, but we do have some players who can go a long way with us and the manager is showing with each passing game that he looks more than capable of doing so too.
That’s it for today.
See you tomorrow.
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