What a weekend of Barclays we’ve just had, everywhere you look there was fun for everyone – as long as you happened to be an Arsenal fan.
We started the weekend’s party with a Saturday evening trip to Bournemouth. Last season, Bournemouth was a fixture, both home and away, where weird stuff happened.
When they came to the Emirates, their winning goal was allowed to stand despite it seeming pretty obvious to anyone with eyes, Evanilson had handled the ball in scoring.
You will also remember, of course, that when we visited Bournemouth, William Saliba was dismissed via VAR for Denial of a Goal Scoring Opportunity, despite him committing said offence just over the halfway line. You’ll probably remember all the gaslighting following that incident even more, as commentators fell over themselves to tell us what a righteous kill this was.
I mention this only because it would have been easy to think, as Gabriel so elegantly swept the ball straight to the aforementioned Evanilson on the edge of our penalty area, with David Raya out of position and our goal at his mercy, “Oh no, here we go again”.
Especially if you’d had to listen to Don Goodman wanging on about how brilliant Bournemouth had been in the opening stages. Don mate, it was literally two minutes.
But it gave you a taste of what the hate watchers around the globe would have been thinking.
One of the truly amazing things about Gabriel though, is his propensity for making up for a rare defensive clanger, by doing the business at the other end. And so, literally as I was just making that very point to Jo, he banged in an emphatic equaliser following some very tidy footwork from Noni Madueke.
Level pegging at half time, Declan Rice and Martin Odegaard took the game away from Bournemouth in the second half. First Odegaard picking up a loose ball from a Gyokeres skirmish, teed up Rice to curl a beautiful finish home from the edge of the box and then the skipper put Bukayo Saka, on a rare deployment from the bench, away down the right.
Racing towards the byline, and having drawn Petrovic from his goal, Saka cut the ball back for the unmarked Rice to fire home his second of the night and first ever Premier League brace.
Game over? Hahahahaha, not quite. Obviously, this is Arsenal.
Some loose defensive work in our defensive third and yet another worldie screamed past David Raya to set up a last 20 minutes you could only call “squeaky bum”. But Bournemouth never really looked like finding a third goal, as exemplified by the dude who threw his head at Gabriel’s elbow in a laughable attempt to win a penalty. Even Chris Kavanaugh wasn’t falling for that.
It may even have been that incident that led him to blow for time, just as Bournemouth were preparing to load one into “the mixer”.
Forward line rotated, three points bagged and Manchester City’s apparent plan to leave Antoine Semenyo on the south coast in the hope of causing us some damage before joining them foiled.
All in all, a good evening.
Better would follow, though. There are apparently some, incredibly deluded, Liverpool fans who still believe they can defend their Premier League title. I’ve got news for you, guys – you can’t. Cody Gakpo lost his shirt in scoring a 94th minute winner at Fulham, only to watch Harrison Reed land an exocet on a postage stamp in Alisson’s top corner just three minutes later.
The defending champions sit on 34 points from 20 games and, whilst the maths are obviously still just about on their side, the reality of their situation very much isn’t.
I fully expect us to clarify Liverpool’s place in this season’s pecking order on Thursday night.
Then it got even better as managerless Chelsea beat Manchester City 1-1 via a 94th minute goal from Enzo Fernandez. I’m not going to say I’ve always liked Fernandez. I didn’t and I still don’t. Of course not, he’s one of several disgusting footballers employed over in SW6, but I do appreciate his contribution to our cause. Even if it felt a little like he did his best to miss.
After a stressful period where we’ve had City right up our backsides and we’ve been living on our nerves a bit (and, I would argue, more than necessary given the quality of our performances), in the space of two games and three days, a two-point gap has become six.
Finally, a bit of daylight, fully deserved given our perfect record over a busy, but excellent Christmas period.
To cap the weekend, we got the news that Manchester United had finally decided that Ruben Amorim was not, in fact, the person to return the Theatre of Dreams to former glory days. This led Rio Ferdinand to a couple of bizarre statements, one being that he’d probably be the second person to be called for an opinion on who should be next, but only after SurAlex of course.
And also that Mikel Arteta – yes, the very same Mikel Arteta currently steering Arsenal towards a glorious destiny – would surely consider an offer from United.
I mean, Rio, really? WHY?
This is a take so bizarre, it almost made me forget all the people who are still trying to tell Arsenal fans that Unai Emery is a better manager than the man who succeeded him at the Emirates.
He didn’t look like it last week, did he?
Yeah, you didn’t think I would let this one pass without referencing a very good ebening for the Arsenal, did you? Big games at the Arsenal this season seem to be following a bit of a pattern this year as the team spend the first half, or in this case, the first 20 minutes of a game working out the challenge in front of them, before cutting loose in the second half. Bayern, Atletico and now Villa have all been dispatched in very similar circumstances (something to bear in mind should it get a bit nervy in the opening stages on Thursday, maybe).
This time, Emi Martinez’s failure to concentrate on the football when faced with the giant Brazilian in front of him cost him dear, allowing Gabriel to nudge the opening goal home and the floodgates open.
By the time three, excellent unerring finishes had found the corner of the North Bank goal from Messrs Zubimendi, Trossard and – in another Christmas miracle, Gabriel Jesus – Don Unai had seen enough. With a turn of speed so dramatic, I feel sure Noni Madueke would have been impressed if only he’d seen him, Emery was down the tunnel, leaving Mikel looking a bit like that GIF of John Travolta looking confused in Pulp Fiction as he searched him out for the post match handshake.
Emery, clearly, has never heard of something called a camera.
Obviously, chez Emirates, there are quite a lot of them so he was quickly found out. Both managers downplayed the incident afterwards, but we all know what would have been said had Arteta done the same thing to Emery.
The fact that Arteta had to swallow a last kick of the game winner, and did so with grace, just three weeks previously stands him in marked contrast to a man who, evidently, was never big enough for the Arsenal job.