How many times do we see Arsene Wenger criticized on here for his team selection, tactics and the timing of his substitutions, but you can hardly fault him today.
In my opinion he definitely played the best team available to him today, and the readers that were calling for Le Prof to drop Ozil and Sanchez for the derby were left eating their words by the end of the game. Ozil got 2 assists and Alexis scored his second goal of the season. And Ramsey, who is much-maligned on here, also gave a masterful performance in midfield.
When Arsenal were 2-0 up, Wenger got his players to sit back and absorb the pressure and aim for a counter-attack now and then, which they did perfectly. Le Prof waited until the hour mark to take Lacazette as usual, but this time he replaced him with Coquelin to shore up the midfield and make it even harder for Tottenham to break through.
This is how Ramsey described the tactics after the game, he said: “It’s brilliant – we needed that,”
“We wanted to capitalise on being at home and we had a good first half.
“We had the game wrapped up at half-time really, we just needed to be clever and smart in the second half and we managed to keep a clean sheet as well.
“I think everyone was ready to give everything out there today. We covered a lot of miles out there, so we really wanted to get that win and we gave everything we could to get that.
“We defended well, went forward well and attacked well. We created a few opportunities and played at a good pace. It was an Arsenal performance.”
That sounds like the players were told exactly the right thing to do at half-time, and surely we can only give credit to one man for the game plan? Credit when it’s due eh?
Sam P