I know it’s only September but Arsenal's win at Newcastle yesterday feels huge. Not necessarily even the result or the performance more the way it happened.
In my eyes the Gyokeres penalty was absolutely stonewall and I was gobsmacked to see it overturned. It looked a mirror image of the situation at Old Trafford last week but whereas United ended up with a penalty and playing against 10 men, Arsenal got nothing.
Yes, the keeper gets a small touch on the ball but it is a foul anywhere else on the pitch so I don’t know why VAR are even getting involved to this degree, as Saka mentioned after the match, these little things always seem to go against us and this is precisely why I was so impressed with the win.
After the stick Arteta got for not going all out attack from kick off against City, I thought this display showed huge amounts of mental resolve, determination and, to paraphrase all of the pundits raving about Liverpool so far this season, to go and get the winner was surely a ‘sign of champions.’
Bear pit atmosphere
The Newcastle fans were all over us after the overturned penalty and despite dominating the opening 25 minutes or so the inevitable happened after the penalty decision and Newcastle went and scored. The ball was running towards our goal with Mosquera under no real pressure but in an attempt to play the ball back to Raya rather than row Z he gave away a corner.
The crowd were up, the Newcastle players were up for it and, with Pope making a couple of decent saves in the Newcastle goal, from Eze especially, this very much felt like one of those games where Arsenal might end up falling a little bit short vs everyone's expectations of what champions do.
Second half
The second half was mainly a siege with Arsenal having almost 75% of the ball and Newcastle really being restricted to counter attacks, especially after Eddie Howe moved to a five at the back.
Arteta really seemed to want this and his substitutions showed how much – Martinelli, Merino and Odegaard were brought off the bench and we had Trossard at left back for a short while before Lewis-skelly came on.
In the first half Arsenal played some lovely stuff and Eze in midfield really seemed to help open us and the game. I also though Saka showed why, as well as Medueke did in the opening weeks, he will come straight back in now he is fit. However, as good as we were I thought Odegaard made a real difference when he came on and it felt a matter of time before we scored.
The goals
They both came from corners but in vastly different ways. The first a short corner on the left played to Eze and back to Rice to change the angle of delivery and it was Rice whose cross picked out Merino in the box and his glancing header was placed perfectly to go in off the far post.
The second was from the right-hand side and Odegaard played an in-swinging corner to just inside the near post. Saliba was somehow left alone to pin Pope away from the ball and Gabriel came steaming through the crowd of players to nod home.
What next for Arsenal?
After thinking the world was conspiring against them at points in the first half this was a huge moment and the celebrations by the Arsenal team showed it.
At a ground where Arsenal have been beaten, beaten-up and suffered some real heartbreak under Arteta the response to going one down seemed a real shift in mentality. Hopefully we can use this as a springboard and take real momentum in to the next run of games, albeit there is an international break in there, the next few premier league games are; West Ham (H), Fulham (A), Palace (H), Burnley (A) and Sunderland (A) before we play Spurs. With all of the attacking riches and squad depth we have now I think we need to looking at 13 points from these 5 games, I think a real statement would be to go and win all five and then blow Spurs away in the derby as well! Maybe I’m getting carried away….
