Arsenal vs Leverkusen match report
Arsenal faced off against Bayer Leverkusen last night and walked away victorious after a dominant first half of football from the Gunners. After what has been a somewhat disappointing pre-season, Mikel Arteta fielded a strong eleven that dominated the German invincible winning team from last season and had a great game of football. Here’s a run down of everything that happened.
Arsenal started the game off on the front foot, looking in control of the game from the moment it kicked off, having early chances and plenty of possession. It didn’t take long for us to get on the scoresheet with a perfect ball from Kai Havertz to the feet of Oleksandr Zinchenko on the edge of the box to fire towards goal into the bottom right-hand corner of the net to make it 1-0, and put Arsenal well and truly in the driving seat. A great assist from Havertz and a great goal from Zinchenko, silencing his critics from the last few weeks.
Only one minute later and we had found the back of the net again with another lovely team worked goal and was again Havertz who created the chance, picking up his second assist of the night when he spotted Leandro Trossard in the middle of the box and nudged a pass through to him, Trossard faked a shot, knocking the ball onto his preferred right foot, sending the Leverkusen defender the wrong way and calmly placed the ball into the back of the net to make it 2-0.
But we weren’t finished yet, going up to 3-0 in the 38th minute with another great goal by Gabriel Jesus who brought the ball through the midfield and gave himself enough space to get a shot off, driving it along the ground and into the bottom left-hand corner of the net, beating the keeper with power and pace and putting Arsenal 3-0 up before half time.
The second half started off a lot like the first and Arsenal came out looking confident and with a three-goal cushion, began to enjoy themselves. Arteta looked to his bench and brought on a few players, including Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka who have been on holidays after the euro’s.
Arsenal sealed the game in the 65th minute when Havertz was involved again, but this time picking up a goal for himself after the ball was squared into the box by Saka on the wing, only for a Leverkusen defender to get a foot to it and put the ball in front of Havertz to tap home and make it 4-0. Another great team goal.
Leverkusen managed to get a goal back in the 76th minute after catching Arsenal off guard and Nathan Tella managed to put a perfect pass into the feet of Adam Hlozek who knocked the ball past David Raya and into the net to make it 4-1.
A great game of football from Arsenal and a positive match as we look towards the new season. With only one pre-season game to go, these minutes mean a lot to the players and will only prepare them for what is going to be a tough season.
What’s your thoughts Gooners?
Daisy Mae
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Nice to see everyone play well (particularly Lewis-Skelly, who looks unshakeable in the press but needs to be tested defensively) but I’ll never get excited by results in friendly matches. Hopeful that havertz’ midfield form in these friendlies will translate to competitive matches, but that does remain to best seen – if he can keep that form up in the EPL, he’ll be a real asset. Similar case with Jesus’ form – I believe he’s extremely capable, but he’s not shown it too much since that injury a couple of years ago. Hope he can get back to his best, but we’ll see
How many more games can Havertz run the show and still get labelled a poor player? Easily in our top 5 players !!!!!!
Yep, he was immense.
Surely the beginning of a good season for the gunners,but we need not carried away with this results as we still need a deadly and prolific striker.
Arteta’s tactical setup was impressive. While many fans were skeptical about Havertz playing in midfield, credit to Arteta for making it work. Havertz’s efficiency was evident, even with limited touches, he made a significant impact on the game.
I’ve always believed that Havertz might not score 4-5 goals in a single match, but he can consistently provide an assist and a goal each game. This would meet the high goal contribution expectations fans have for our strikers. I think he’ll achieve those numbers this season.
And how amazing was Myles? He’s truly exceptional for his age. While Nwaneri is highly rated, Myles is equally impressive, and I now rate them both at the same level.
Zinchenko was outstanding, with no faults in his performance, and that bullet strike was incredible.
Jesus was his usual menacing self, and Trossard showed superb composure.
Our back line had some interesting developments, with Gabriel and Saliba occasionally moving to the edges. I can see how Calafiori will fit into this setup.
I’m really excited about our youngsters, especially Myles and Ethan. They show such maturity and intent for their age. Unlike Chido, who seemed to think he didn’t need to earn his place after just 30 games, these youngsters have a superb mentality. Myles is a physical beast, and Ethan is a fantastic deputy to Odegaard, with confidence, guile, and deceptive speed. If they play regularly this season, they’ll light up the league next season. I’m so pleased with their progress.
👍
Good game. But it shouldn’t make us feel that we don’t need a proper striker and support for Saka.
What’s not to like? An excellent performance all round really. I think the Arsenal players would have got more from that game in front of 50,000 or so at The Emirates than trapsing around the US on their 11,500-mile round trip tour – particularly playing the likes of Bournemouth there!
However, it is only a friendly at the end of the day so I don’t think we can say everything is fine and ready now for the coming PL season.
For example, in my opinion the team still needs a 20+ goals a season striker. Those goals will be needed across a 38-game season and, despite their performances yesterday, I just don’t see Jesus or Havertz providing that game in and game out.
Arsenal is certainly continuing to move in the right direction as we all know, but there’s more to do and relatively little time to do it in this transfer window.
Based on the last 10+ years there is a huge amount of.time left in the window….!
Arsenal seem to have got most of their issues covered and have clearly done lots of leg work for 2 or more of the following incoming :
1) CDM… Guimares with Swap deal for Ramsdale or Merino for.whom a deal already done it seems and I guess they’re checking to see if Guinares who was their choice 2 years ago is able to be done.
2) Toney/ Osimhan/ Gyokores.. each of these could be done and it seems Arteta seeing how pre season goes and first few PL games perhaps ….Jesus back but will he stay fit and if he is CF then can Havertz play the 8 role? Looked good yesterday based on reports but it’s just a friendly
3) Winger… this Turkish guy or else if one-off the forwards above then perhaps Jesus could play on RW and compete with Saka
For me I would prefer the following:
Guimares which allows Ramsdale to get proper game time which he deserves
Yilmaz as back up yo Saka … I personally don’t think we need a centre forward…we scored plenty of goals last year and it was more we couldn’t break down eg West Ham and Villa ( twice) which means more options in midfield or on the wing as we have plenty of forwards to score
It’s hard to criticize Arteta if he didn’t sign a new Striker though we fans want one. City and Arsenal had same goals difference last season despite City having Halaand. That means we didn’t really do bad And then scoring goals in pre-season games may further strengthen Arteta’s believe that we don’t really need a new CF
In my opinion Arteta signing Calafiori is a good decision because you cant bet on Saliba playing the whole season without injury after his heroics at Euro. And then signing Merino would be fine because of injury prone Pathey and an ageing Jorginho. Viera/Nwaneri can always stand in gap for Saka.
I want a new CF but if we can’t get a high profile prolific CF which won’t come cheap then, we should stick with what we have but Nkethiah not inclusive.
Good points, but we shouldn’t forget Haaland missed quite a few games for City in the PL last season through injury. He still scored 27 goals in the 31 games he played though. That’s a pretty frightening statistic (and in only his second PL season) and one that only Saka with 16 goals in 35 games comes remotely close to.
I think we need to be a little careful in taking too much from yesterday’s game, excellent performance though it was by Arsenal. The club should still try and sign a striker to get those 20+ goals a season (in addition to what everyone else provides) to ensure there’s a cushion to take account of a (presumably) fit Haaland in 2024-25.
It may not be possible to get one in the end – the good ones don’t come cheap as you say – but Arsenal should continue to try.
Haaland can score 5 goals every game…they still only get 3 points
So it’s more ensuring we ha e enough solutions to break down every team rather than someone scoring 20 goals a season
By having those solutions it might mean we Saka or Jesus or Havetz or Trossard might all get over 15 and one gets over 20 which is plenty
But it’s not how many Haaland scores in a particular game but how many he contributes across a season. It’s the guarantee (or as near to one as possible) that he provides – not “x, y or z might get this or that”.
I’m suggesting that Arsenal will have that additional scoring “cushion” with a striker who can actually get 20+ goals a season. Something, by the way, that no Arsenal player has achieved since Aubameyang back in 2019-20.
I don’t see Jesus, for example, doing anything like that because he never has and he’s also pretty injury prone as his appearance record suggests. His highest PL tally was 14 goals back in 2019-20 – ironically somewhat behind our old pal, Auba.
What about a presumably fit Jesus? We should not also forget Jesus missed quite a lot of games last season. We surely missed his goals last season and he missed more games last season than Haaland which was the reason he chose to sit out the Copa America and concentrate on been fit for Arsenal this season, let’s strike the balance here in our analysis, he surely won’t score as much as Haaland, but we missed his goals as City115 missed Haaland’s and he even missed more games than Haaland.
Well:
1) Even when fit, Jesus doesn’t score (and never has) scored anything remotely like the number of goals Haaland has.
2) As you say, Jesus is far more injury-prone than Haaland. In 2023-24, he played in 27 PL games, scoring 4 goals. In 2022-23, he played in 26 PL games, scoring 11 goals. I said “presumably” regarding Haaland because he is fit normally. The same cannot be said of Jesus.
Nobody had a bad game and I came away thinking how could Bayer Keverkusen have dominated the German league? I put it down to the game being a friendly with very little in the way of rash challenges and both teams saving themselves for the season ahead, but that was being unkind to the Arsenal who were defensively solid and took their chances when presented to them. A couple of lovely touches from Odegaard too.
For all the stick that Vieira has received- justifiably a lot of the time, I thought he stuck to his task pretty well deputising for Saka.
“a great goal from Zinchenko silencing his critics from the past two weeks”, no it won’t because the criticism of him is regarding his terrible defending and not his forward play.
It would have been nice to mention the younger players especially Myles Lewis-Skelly and Ethan Nwaneri who both had impressive performances, but the star was Gabby Jesus who looked a completely different player from last season, slim, eager and back to terrorising the players in front of him. Havertz playing in a transitional position between midfield and attack also played well.
He hasnt silenced anyone mate. Nobody has an issue with him going forward its his defending that is in question
Exactly what I said!
Perhaps he will then be utilised more in midfield now that there are more options at the back
What about a presumably fit Jesus? When surely missed his goals last season and he missed more games last season than Haaland which was the reason he chose to sit out the Copa America and concentrate on been fit for Arsenal this season, let’s strike the balance here in our analysis, he surely won’t score as much as Haaland, but we missed his goals as City115 missed Haaland’s and he even missed more games than Haaland.
See reply above.
Good game of Football, unto the next one. COYG!