The Goonerworld blog
Matchday reaction, considered opinion and the Arsenal stories worth talking about.
Match Report
Seventy-two minutes. That's how long Hull City held out at the Emirates on Saturday, and when the breakthrough finally came it wasn't pretty. Noni Madueke's shot was saved by Konstantinos Tzolakis, the ball ran loose, and Martin Ødegaard got there first to dink it over the goalkeeper. Arsenal 1, Hull City 0.
Opinion
Every few weeks the same conversation starts up. Bukayo Saka isn't the player he was. He's lost a yard. He's in a dip. He doesn't look right.
Opinion
Eighty minutes. That is how long it took Arsenal to put a shot on target at the City Ground, and when it finally came, it needed a deflection off Jair Cunha to wrong-foot Matz Sels. Nottingham Forest 0, Arsenal 1. Noni Madueke, 80th minute. One effort on target all afternoon, and it was enough.
Opinion
Arsenal arrived unbeaten, chasing an eighth straight win to start the season — their best opening to a campaign in 123 years. They left having been taken apart by a Brighton side that out-fought, out-thought and out-ran them from the first whistle. The scoreline read 3-0. The performance, by Arteta's own admission, was worse than that.
Opinion
Nine changes from the side that ground out victory at Sunderland, two teenagers making their first starts of the season, and a scoreline that still ended up looking comfortable: Ipswich 2, Arsenal 4. Arsenal are through to the Carabao Cup fourth round, and while the closing stages got needlessly untidy, the story of the night at Portman Road was set inside the opening quarter of an hour — by a 16-year-old who took the ball off his own centre-forward's toes in his head and went and won the game himself.
Opinion
Nine straight wins. Arsenal haven't strung together a run like that since the Invincibles, and they got this one the hard way — away at a raucous Stadium of Light, against a Sunderland side that hit them harder and ran further than anyone they'd faced this season. Sunderland 0, Arsenal 2.
Opinion
Seventy-seven seconds. That's how long it took Morgan Rogers to put Chelsea ahead at the Emirates on Sunday — the same Morgan Rogers that Arsenal spent most of the summer trying to sign before Chelsea walked in with £117 million and took him instead. He picked out the bottom corner with a finish that had no business going in from that angle, and for a moment the ground went quiet in a way it hadn't all season.
Opinion
Let's not pretend that was pretty. It wasn't. For long stretches of Monday night at Villa Park, Arsenal looked like a side still searching for the rhythm that made them champions — ponderous in possession, sluggish in transition, and wasteful in the moments that should have put the game to bed long before the eight minutes of added time that nobody's heart needed.
Opinion
When previewing a game, I look at previous games and think to myself, “Will this player hurt us this time around?” So, for the upcoming Monday night game against Villa at Villa Park, it’s been difficult to find a picture of a player who is either still playing for Villa or about to be sold. I don’t recall another circumstance where this has happened with any club we have faced in the years I have been attending football.