Arsenal certainly looked imperious and confident when they took to the field at Selhurst Park, and they were totally dominant for the whole of the first half, but Palace’s dogged defending meant that the Gunners were restricted to just three shots on target in the whole match, one of which was Martin Odegaard’s penalty after Nketiah was taken down by the Palace keeper.
We went ahead in the 54th minute, but within the next ten minutes, Tomiyasu, Arteta’s replacement for the injured Jurrien Timber, attracted two yellow cards and was given his marching orders, leaving Arsenal to defend with ten men for the rest of the game.
But, despite our nerve-wracking end to the game, Mikel Arteta was overjoyed with the result as we came away with three points from a very difficuly venue. “I loved it, absolutely loved it.” the Boss told Arsenal.com.
“It’s a really difficult place to come. We played how we wanted to play 11 against 11, we dominated the game, we created enough chances, we missed two very, very huge chances that normally we put away, but we never gave up. We continued the way we wanted to continue.
“Eddie earned us the right to go ahead with his action, we scored the penalty and then we had to play half an hour with 10 men, which is obviously a conflict that we didn’t prepare.
“We had to adapt and I think the players worked fantastically because I don’t think we gave anything away. The subs were great, the way they came out, the concentration, the focus on how they helped the team and changed the team’s momentum in many occasions of the game, so I’m really happy.”
Arteta certainly seems like a happy bunny, but it is blindingly obvious that we will ned to find our scoring boots soon for when we come up against even more dangerous opponents….
CALLING ALL ARSENAL FANS! Anyone who would like to contribute an Article or Video opinion piece on JustArsenal, please contact us through this link…
