Arsenal 4 Crystal Palace 1: Early blitz provides hope for life after Alexis Sanchez
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A day out for the flat-track bullies or glimpses of an exciting new beginning without Alexis Sanchez?
Fans of Arsenal have seen their team deliver enough false dawns in recent years to instinctively suspect the former but, even allowing for Crystal Palace’s very obvious limitations, there was still enough to suggest that life after Sanchez might actually be an improvement on the past year.
Arsenal should have begun this process with Sanchez’s sale last summer and, after having a £45 million bid rejected yesterday, are now preparing to return with a second bid of around £50 million for Borussia Dortmund striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
With Henrikh Mkhitaryan to come and Mesut Ozil, Alex Iwobi, Alexandre Lacazette and Jack Wilshere all influential here in a match that was effectively over at 4-0 after 22 minutes, Arsenal’s main problem has never really related to their offensive options.
It is the defensive shape of the team and, in switching to a third different system of the season here, Wenger might finally have found the best balance.
The addition of Mohamed Elneny just behind two more liberated central midfielders in Wilshere and Granit Xhaka meant a return to four at the back and provided the platform for an immediate dominance of possession.
Whereas Xhaka, Wilshere and Aaron Ramsey are all midfielders who like to break forward in attack, Elneny did an extremely effective and disciplined Kante-esque job just simply parked in front of the defence.
Crystal Palace, who are close to the signings themselves of both Jaroslaw Jach and Erdal Rakip, must have planned simply to nullify Arsenal early in the game given the tension swirling around the Emirates just now.
Simmering frustrations would not have taken long to surface, except that a defensive horror-show followed from Palace that gifted Arsenal three goals in only 13 minutes.
Arsenal did not even have to produce much to create them with their left-back, Nacho Monreal, scoring the first and then even providing two assists. Iwobi’s shot had just been comfortably tipped over by Palace goalkeeper Wayne Hennessey and, from Xhaka’s corner, Monreal simply lost James McArthur and headed Arsenal into the lead.
Monreal then sprinted onto Timothy Fosu-Mensah’s miscued clearance and crossed for Iwobi to finish past Hennessey. From another Xhaka corner, Monreal was also unmarked to hook the ball back along the six-yard box for Laurent Koscielny to finish.
Having emerged as the unlikely answer to any creative concerns without Sanchez, Monreal then signalled that he was feeling pain in his hamstring and was quickly taken off ahead of Wednesday’s League Cup semi-final against Chelsea.
Arsenal’s goals had been uncharacteristically scrappy but a wonderful blur of passing then followed between Ozil and Wilshere that culminated with Ozil backheeling for Lacazette to end his nine-game scoring drought.
Hodgson had talked about the “sadistic pleasure of management” before this game but, with 70 minutes still remaining, even he must have feared just what the final score might be.
To their credit, Palace did actually consolidate defensively and begin posing an attacking threat. After some typical nimble dribbling, Wilfried Zaha forced a first save of Petr Cech and the Arsenal goalkeeper was then also required to make an even better block to deny Christian Benteke.
Cech had been aiming for a record 200th Premier League clean sheet but Luka Milivojevic’s volley at least provided Palace with a late consolation.
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