Arsenal vs Man United Pre-Season friendly match report
Mikel Arteta and his squad walked away 2-1 winners against Premier League rivals Manchester United and their manager Erik Ten Hag in our second game of our USA pre-season tour. Starting the tour off with a bang and coming away victorious after a good 90 minutes of football from all involved. Some valuable minutes in the legs of our first team and some academy projects too. Here’s a run down of everything that happened.
For the first half Arteta fielded mainly experienced players, lining up a strong team with the two 17-year-old academy additions Ethan Nwaneri and Ayden Heaven. Arsenal started off the game looking strong but also a bit rusty. Nwaneri had an early chance, but it was saved by United’s keeper Onana, while Reiss Nelson looked o have been taken down in the box but nothing was given.
United seemed to click a bit faster and were creating some early chances and it didn’t take them long to take advantage of Arsenal’s sloppiness. Marcus Rashford pinged a ball towards a running Rasmus Hojlund who young Ayden Heaven was trying to keep up with, Hojlund managed to use his strength to get past and around Heaven and came 1 on 1 with Karl Hein and slipped the ball through his legs to make it 1-0 to Manchester United.
Arsenal then began to tighten up their play and it wasn’t long until we managed to get one back when Zinchenko slipped a ball through to Nwaneri who spotted the run of Jesus in the box, squaring the ball into his feet. Jesus calmly tapped the ball into the back of the United net, beating the keeper and levelling the scores. I do have to admit, it did look offside, but wasn’t given so we will take it.
The second half started, and Arteta kept the team mostly the same but took Nwaneri and Heaven off and brought Oulad M’Hand and Kiwior on. Odegaard had a great chance early in the second half but was miraculously saved by United’s keeper.
Arteta again looked to his bench in the 63rd and 71st minute and brought on mostly the rest of the bench, including Gabriel Martinelli who took no time to make a difference, scoring the winner after being on the pitch for only 10 minutes when Myles Lewis-Skelly, another 17-year-old academy project, switched the ball out to Martinelli on the wing, Martinelli took on United’s young defender Scanlon, dropped his shoulder, took a quick look up and fired the ball into the bottom left hand corner to win the game for Arsenal.
There was a penalty shoot out after the game, just for the sake of the fans, where United got to save a bit of their blushes winning the shoot out 4-3 with Vieira, Martinelli and Gabriel all scoring from the spot and Havertz and Kiwior had their shots saved by Onana.
All in all, it was good to see the boys back in action and getting some valuable minutes into their legs before the real work begins.
Daisy Mae
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