What can I say at this point? These guys won’t just stop winning games, just a relentless machine at the moment that looks scarily obsessed with grabbing the PL title. Arsenal finished off 2022 with a bang with a 4-2 win against Brighton on the South coast. With Newcastle and City dropping points today, Arsenal find themselves 7 points clear at the top of the PL standings with 16 games played. Still a lot of football left to play this season but Arsenal don’t look closer to dropping any points compared to their rivals for Top 4. Arsenal opened the match scoring 66 seconds in and then scored about 100 seconds into the 2nd half and didn’t look back. Things got eerie towards the end of the match, but we took all 3 points at a tough away ground and now have great momentum with our clash with Newcastle on 1/3/2023.
THOUGHTS ON THE MATCH:
- Rotation might be needed soon: We started the same XI that played against West Ham which is fine but with Newcastle and the rest of January’s games coming fast, Mikel might need to implement some rotation to keep us fresh and healthy. It’ll be tough for Mikel cause he will not want to ruin the momentum we have gained the past two games but something will have to give in January. Fábio Vieira could do with some playing time, but for who? Maybe can Tierney and Tomiyasu some game time. We will see what Mikel does, good thing we have going for us is that our front 4 are all in their early 20s and should have the ability and energy to pick up where we left off but we will see.
- Scary moments for Gabriel and Saliba: Even though we won the game 4-2, there were more sloppy moments from our CBs. Honestly it is a shit show from lots of Arsenal players but Gabriel and Saliba, as our CBs need to sort that shit out. Xhaka needs to stay with Sarmiento and not pass him off to Gabriel, Gabriel needs to pick up Ferguson running to him which lets Saliba stay with Gross and Tomiyasu with Mitoma, lot easier said than done and credit to Brighton for the move, we just need to be able to sort that stuff out.
So sloppy from Saliba, his errors are picking up and for sure as a defender, we are going to remember these moments as opposed to his good ones but he needs to fix this rustiness soon.
3. Fast starters: We scored 66 seconds into this game and 100 seconds into the second half. We did the same to Liverpool as well, if we want to keep these things up that would be great.
4. Eddie, Ø, Martinelli, and Saka all getting on the scoresheet: when we need our youngsters the most, they came up big again. All of them got goals in spectacular fashion and seem to be in great form going into these January fixtures.
5. Ødegaard has done it again and again: I don’t have words for this guy at this point, he keeps proving me wrong with a man of the match performance away from home.
The assist to Martinelli is absolutely outrageous. The vision, the touch, the weight of the pass, all superb from our Norwegian. He also pulled out a basketball jumper celebration out of nowhere, how can you not love this guy?
6. Thomas Partey with another quiet masterclass: I’m telling you man, we go as far as this man takes us. He is like the older brother that gives the younger brothers the freedom to go and fuck shit up cause we got big bro (Thomas) to keep everything in order. He dominated the Brighton makeshift midfield, won tackles, distributed the ball etc. We gave up quite a bit of possession to Brighton which is understandable but with Thomas, it never felt like we were in jeopardy which is crucial we keep him healthy.
7. This Mudryk guy wants to be at Arsenal so bad: He wants to be at Arsenal so bad, we might as well just get it done. It is kind of weird for me when players twerk for other clubs to force a move.
Mudryk’s pace and directness don’t grow on trees. For a reasonable price, we need to get our guy if Arteta and Edu are this keen on the player. (future blog on Mudryk coming soon)
Twitter credits: NBC Sports, Fabrizio Romano, afcstuff, The Athletic FC, DailyAFC, hfworld_, mandynelli_, Mark Beard