Arsenal have secured their place in the next round of the Europa League with a comfortable 3-0 win at the Emirates.
The Gunners were gifted a level tie after our opponents put the ball into their own net, with Aubameyang getting credit for his positive play in the lead up to the goal. Pierre ran at the Bate right-back and shot past him to get into a crossing position, but the defender failed to compose himself and ended up putting the ball into his own goal despite a lack of pressure from any of our players.
The Belarussians didn’t allow that goal to get into their heads however, and came back at us shortly after, and our defence was far from convincing, although thankfully Lichtensteiner was in the right place to save us from conceding, and 1-1 at that point in the game would have put huge pressure on us to win by two clear goals.
We continued to plug away at the other end too, and before you knew it, we moved ahead in the tie. A neatly taken corner from Granit Xhaka is found by Shkodran Mustafi’s head, thanks to a stunted run by the German, which appeared to confuse his marker.
The second half proved to be much the more comfortable, and Alex Iwobi was key in us piling forwards at speed, but unfortunately his shooting leaves us with a little more to desire, which can be said on many occasion.
I won’t pretend to be his biggest fan, but if he could work on his shooting and his composure then there could be some hope for him.
Just as the game was becoming a bit routine, another corner sprung us our third goal, with the recently added Sokratis getting on the end of it with his first touch of the ball. The cross was whipped in at speed just above Mustafi’s head which took the goalkeeper out of the equation, for his defensive partner to put away into the open goal. 3-0 and coasting.
Denis Suarez came into the game to replace Henrikh Mkhitaryan shortly after the third goal, but despite the opportunity to showcase his talents with no pressure, there was little to talk about from the final moments of the match, but we can certainly be happy with our overall performance, and we now await the draw tomorrow.
Which teams do need to avoid from the next round draw? Did our performances over the two legs deserve such a comfortable passing?
Pat J