Arsenal finished their first game of the new year 4-1 winners against Fulham at the Emirates Stadium, a scoreline which doesn’t quite reflect how close the game was at times.
Arsenal started 2019 with a rare first-half lead, thanks to Granit Xhaka, though they easily could’ve conceded at least one in the opening period. In the second half, Alexandre Lacazette doubled the lead, but Fulham finally made one of their chances count to make it 2-1.
Aaron Ramsey came off the bench to score and kill the game before Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang added some gloss to the result in the final minutes, keeping his challenge for the Golden Boot going.
Let’s have a look at our individual player ratings for the match.
4Substitutes
Lucas Torreira 7
Torreira had a decent half, completing a greater percentage of his passes than any of the starters and winning the ball back once or twice. However, he was hindered by the referee, who refused to give him free-kicks for blatant fouls whilst giving fouls against him for good tackles.
Torreira has won 49 free-kicks for Arsenal this season, more than any other player on the team by far (the next closest is Guendouzi on 35). It’s bizarre, therefore, that Graham Scott didn’t give him a single one.
Aaron Ramsey 8.5
With speculation surrounding his future reaching new levels this week, it was nice to see Ramsey continuing to focus on the task at hand on the pitch. He scored just minutes after coming on to kill the game, and he didn’t misplace any of his passes in the final quarter of an hour.
Bukayo Saka N/A
Saka made a couple of nice runs and put pressure on a Fulham defender to force a mistake leading to the fourth goal. However, he didn’t spend much time on the pitch and Arsenal mostly had the ball on the right-hand side during his cameo.
Even without making a significant contribution to the match, it’s fantastic to see an academy product who won’t even be 18 years old until next season making his Premier League debut.