Arsenal played one of their best games of the season against Leeds last night, and the return to form of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang saw us go 4-0 up just a few minutes into the second half, but then our play got a little more lax, and suddenly we were at 4-2 and defending like crazy to stop Leeds getting a third.
We managed to calm it down enough after to keep the three points, but Hector Bellerin thinks we should not have let our opponents back into the game so easily.
Our right-back told Arsenal.com after the game: “If there’s a team in the Premier League that you know will run for the whole 90 minutes, that’s Leeds,”
“We did really well to score straight away from the re-start but then we conceded a set piece. It’s something that we know they’re strong at and we need to be more careful with that. Then we conceded another goal and even though you’re still two goals up you’re trying to defend the box as much as you can and make sure they don’t get another one.
“That shouldn’t be the way we play, you know? We should manage the game better in a way that when we’re winning 4-0, we should just have the ball and make them run instead of them making us run. There’s still a lot to learn but obviously, especially that first half, was really positive.”
But, despite our lapse at the end, it was good to see us scoring goals again, and to leapfrog Leeds back into the top half of the table. Yes it could have ended better, but three points is three points. As Bellerin remarked in the end: “A performance like today it should have been a completely different second half but as I say, it was a very positive second half and we’ll build on that.”
COYG!