We continued our unbeaten Europa League campaign with a 4-2 win in Belarus with a mixture of youth and experience or ‘Youxperience’ as I call it.
Theo and Olivier Giroud started up front, and Jack Wilshere also started the game as the Arsenal man continues to make superb progress with his Arsenal renaissance. Mustafi, Rob Holding and Per were the back three, and the rest of the side was made up with youngsters including Reiss Nelson and Ainsley Maitland-Niles.
Has Wenger solved our problems?
Theo(!) struck early on to give us some breathing space in the early exchanges, popping in a rebound and then pouncing on a defensive error to put us 2 goals to the good. Rob Holding headed us three ahead after good work by Per from a corner, and it was 3-0 at the break, and we were coasting. In fairness we should have been 5 or 6 to the good but Theo couldn’t add to his brace.
BATE made it 1-3 before Olivier Giroud joined the Arsenal 100 Club, putting away a penalty to put us 4-1 up. Rob Holding was at fault for BATE’s second goal, and David Ospina was outstanding in goal to ensure there was no comeback and we maintained our 100% record in the competition.
Anyway, no time for messing around, straight from Thursday night football, we now have a game on Sunday lunchtime against Brighton. You’d hope Wenger would ditch the Youxperience and wheel out our big guns for the game, including Laurent Koscielny, Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez, as we look to continue a nice little unbeaten run that seems to be building.
