Great Win against Aston Villa sends a statement to our rivals.
The gunners claimed a pretty huge win in the second game week of this new campaign with a professional display against Aston Villa, second half goals from Leandro Trossard and Thomas Partey made sure that we would be leaving Villa park with all three points ahead of a home tie against Brighton next weekend.
It was a cagey first half where we had most of the possession, but got threatened by Villa’s pace on the counter. After a glorious chance for villa to go ahead in the first half was squandered by Ollie Watkins, an even better chance to punish us further was missed by the Villa man with only the brilliant David Raya keeping us in the game. We later made them rue their missed chances with a well taken finish from Trossard and a goal from Partey which Martinez should have kept out.
The importance of winning this game could not be overemphasized and boy am I happy we pulled through. Not only did we get sweet revenge over a team that did the double over us last season, but also sent out a clear measage to the rest of the league that we are not going anywhere anytime soon. With Man city winning earlier today, it was important that we won our game as well so that we do not start playing catch-up early on in this campaign
These are games that champions win regardless of whether they dominated through out or not, considering the level of opposition and difficulty of the away ground, then any way to win would suffice and that we did. Considering the run of games we had coming, getting a win in this one is the perfect confidence booster and will give us eve more belief heading into those crunch ties.
Who was your man of the match?
KENNETH BENJAMIN.
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Raya probably deserves motm as he really earned that clean sheet with the big save, and didn’t really put a foot wrong. Had they scored first, who knows? Trossard as well, obviously made a huge impact when he came on.
Thought saliba was great as usual, Gabriel was defensively very good, made a couple of mistakes with the ball but also produced some very good forward passes. Partey, timber and white generally played well.
I’ve criticised rice in the past for his passing being a bit too predictable/safe, but he made some of the more impactful forward passes (and runs) in this game.
Odegaard, while many are saying didn’t do enough, actually played some extremely clever and dangerous passes around the box – had saka scored his chance (and been onside, which is doubtful), odegaard would have had a beautiful assist to his name.
Overall I thought everyone played very well/brilliantly in parts, but were unable to keep villa at bay for sizeable parts of the game as well – I more credit villa for that (Rogers, in particular who we really struggled to contain) than pointing the finger at any of our players tbh. Can always be better, but you’ve got to give credit where it’s due.
a win is a win I’ll take it that fatjock McGinn is a horrible character but we got lucky partey passes well but very weak and falls over too easily no out &out striker will catch up with us in the end..
Several players put in fairly strong performances but imo you have to give motm to Raya. If he keeps this up I’m actually going to be just as happy to see him between the sticks as Ramsdale.
Am in agreement with BB above, Raya is the man of the match for me, he has vindicated the gaffer and put a lot of stories to bed.
Arteta’s decision to have Raya as the No1 goalkeeper is really paying off. Man keeps producing world class saves. Elite goalkeeper.
Raya was good but he didn’t have to be brilliant because Villas finishing was dire. Even the ones Raya saved (and he did) was really poor finishing, giving him a chance to save, when he shouldn’t have been given it.
That’s always the case, though – no gk can save the unsaveable, but many other gks would have either given up or been too slow to get up and make that save yesterday.
Raya saved the match, twice now.