Despite a second-half scare, we finally stopped the rot with a win against a lively Leeds side at The Emirates on Sunday afternoon.
A hat-trick from Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and one from unlikely hero Hector Bellerin saw us four goals to the good before a late Leeds rally halved the deficit to get Arsenal fans everywhere reaching for the toilet duck.
Many Gooners would have been forced to remember the 4-4 draw away at Newcastle back in 2011 where we threw away a four-goal lead to just take one point from the game. Once again, and not surprisingly, the officials played a big part in us not winning that game even after letting in 5, but let’s not go there today.
Aubameyang came back to the starting line up, while Martin Odegaard also played in a very attacking line up alongside Emile Smith-Rowe, Saka and Dani Ceballos. David Luiz partnered Gabriel at the back after the Brazilian missed our last game through some top-notch cheating by the officials and the FA during and after the Wolves game, anyway, let’s not go there either. It did, however, give Luiz a bit of time to reflect on his decision to not touch the Wolves attacker, leaving him more time to play some online games at Olybet Suomi.
It’s been a while since we have played such nice, attacking football and despite the late scare, let’s not forget Leeds should have probably had a penalty at 4-2 as well, but the game was actually enjoyable and plain sailing for the most part. In fact, I only found myself getting stressed when I saw Willian coming on and Aubameyang/Saka etc playing the full 90 mins with Benfica (twice) and Man City coming up in the next few days.
Anyway, the win doesn’t do much for our league position, but it will go somehow into boosting Aubameyang’s confidence and hopefully we can welcome Thomas Partey and Kieran Tierney back for some very hard fixtures which we have coming up over the next few weeks.
Next up is Benfica away in the Europa League, I say away, it’s actually being played at a ‘neutral venue’ so a nice short easy trip to Rome for the away game, and then a nice, little jaunt to Athens for the ‘home’ leg. Good job there’s not a pandemic on or anything, but let’s not go there either.
We’re back to winning ways, and long may it continue!
