Arsenal hadn’t won a game in their last 5 matches and without a win in 2018, and Crystal Palace were in great form in the same period, so all the miserable Arsenal haters were predicting an easy win for Palace, but suddenly after just six minutes Arsenal were 1-0 up from a header by Nacho Monreal who has just come back from injury.
And unbelievably just 4 minutes later it was 2-0 when Alex Iwobi, who has had an unbelievable amount of criticism on justarsenal lately, was on hand to poke a centre into a crowded box from Monreal into the net.
Arsenal were flying, and amazingly on 13 minutes the Gunners were 3-0 ahead thanks to Koscielny, from another Xhaka corner. That is both our returning defenders have scored and we are already out of sight and Lacazette hasn’t even got into the game yet.
But, thanks be to God, just 9 mins later, Ozil sends a brilliant backheel through to our out of form striker who slots it into the net to make it 4-0 with only a quarter of the game gone. Incredible stuff, and who was that Alexis geezer again???
Palace finally got a chance on the half hour mark but Cech was equal to Sako’s attempt, and 5 mins later Monreal seems in trouble and gets replaced by Maitland-Niles.
The game was already over by half time and Wenger can start thinking about calming the players down and keeping them fit for the big game against Chelsea on Wednesday…
The second half was played as expected, with the Gunners saving energy and Palace trying hard to not conceded any more and embarrass themselves, but other than Wilshere and Xhaka going down and looking injured there was little to tell until Luka Milivojevic finally got one back with 12 minutes to go, but we were hardly worried.
Lacazette had a penalty call with 2 mins of injury time gone, but did it really matter? So Arsenal scored 4 without Alexis, Chelsea scored 4 without Morata, can we expect a 3rd 0-0 draw on Wednesday?
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