Thursday, March 28, 2024

3 Things We Learnt About Arsenal In Southampton Triumph

1) After our last two wins, you’d have thought Arsenal would have gained some much-needed confidence on the pitch, but our performance last night left much to be desired. Nothing ever changes. We didn’t come out all guns blazing against Southampton, despite the statistics showing our poor performance against teams higher than us in the Premier League. As is our won’t Arsenal left things to the last 20 minutes before they picked up the pace but was that partly due to the Saints being down to 10 men. Yes, we got the result we’d hoped and prayed for, never mind needed, but if our mediocre performance is anything to go by it was only because we got lucky. Once again, a last-minute goal was the only real bright spot of the game.

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2) Olivier Giroud has definitely lost his haters, even if just temporarily. Since returning from injury his performance has picked up at least a notch. In fact, it was only when The Ox was substituted for Giroud in the 65th minute that Arsenal’s game noticeably picked up tempo. It didn’t seem to matter to the fans that he didn’t actually score a goal, albeit he did miss a great opportunity – the goal scoring was left to Alexis Sanchez again – but it would appear that he’s come back fitter and faster than before. Let’s hope he can keep it up and score a few more goals along the way.

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3) Fraser Forster has the reflexes of a cat and Arsenal’s defence, yet again, left Emiliano Martinez with little to do. Arsenal had eight shots on target last night – and only one of those got past Forster to land in the back of the net. With Laurent Koscielny back from injury and paired up once again with Per Mertesacker this is the third consecutive game where Arsenal have kept a clean sheet. With Southampton only managing to get one shot on target Martinez was left twiddling his thumbs for much of the game.

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