Aaron Ramsey is probably speaking for the whole Arsenal squad when he says that he’s looking forward to a ‘little breather‘ with his national team.

The international break ends what has been a pretty hectic period of games for Arsenal with three away matches in their last four.

Struggling in the second half against Newcastle, you could see that the effects of the midweek exertions against Monaco were taking their toll as the Magpies dominated the play and Arsenal, at times, looked like they wouldn’t be able to hold on and close the gap on Manchester City who had stretched their lead back to four points with a win over West Brom earlier in the day.

But hold on they did and they even had a chance to make the scoreline even more of an inaccurate reflection when Olivier Giroud fluffed his hattrick lines in the dying moments of the game.

Speaking after the match, Rambo said

“It was a difficult game.

“In the first half we created a few opportunities and we took a couple of them.

“Maybe in the second half we took our foot off the gas and they game out and made it difficult for us. We did well in the end to hang onto our victory.

“[Monaco] was obviously really disappointing but we took the positives from it as well. We went over there and won 2-0 which not many teams have done. They don’t concede a lot there so we took a lot from that game.

“We’re on a good run at the moment and we just wanted to keep that going today. We came away with three points and that’s another game to tick off now. We’re looking forward to meeting up with our national teams and having a little breather from club football.”