Arsenal started this game with confidence after our excellent preseason, and in all fairness we should have been 1-0 up if Martinelli hadn’t fluffed a sitter after just four minutes, but Arsenal didn’t drop their heads and controlled the game for the first quarter hour.
Palace tried to get back into the game with many long balls up to Zaha, but they didn’t get their first attempt on goal until the 42nd minute but Ramsdale was alert and managed to push it away.
Strangely, Granit Xhaka got booked and you could call it a moment of madness when he dived clumsily miles away from his marker. Awful decision which got him his first card of the season, but it won’t be his last!
But we went into the break with a fully deserved lead…
Palace’s tactics in the first half was to pump up long balls and it gave them a few half chances, and they had a couple again at the start of the second half too, but they had a massive chance after ten mins when Eze was left through one on one with Ramsdale and tried to put it through Aaron’s legs, but luckily it never made it.
Just after Odegaard had a free kick from just outside the box but curled it just past the post, and we kept waiting for the calming second goal.
Ben White has not been at his best tonight and when a Palace player ran past him for yet another long ball, White was rightly booked for pulling him back.
Then it looked like Arsenal dropped back as Palace went on the offensive and Vieira’s were very aggressive when it looked the Gunners seemed to be flagging.
Palace really put the pressure on with ten minutes to go and came close a couple of times with loose balls in a packed Ramsdale penalty area, but Arsenal held on. With 8 minutes to go Jesus was replaced by Nketiah and Tierney replaced Zinchenko.
Then suddenly out of nowhere, Saka was found on his own and his quite wild shot luckily came off a defender, and Arsenal fans could breathe again…
It’s a great start to the new season.
COYG!