Kevin Whitcher's Arsenal Blog

Arsenal 4 Crystal Palace 1     Premier League    Sunday 19th March 2023 2pm    A win was certainly crucial yesterday to keep the belief high as football enters an international break and Mikel Arteta’s players delivered the three points on a far less stressful afternoon than many had feared. Palace, having dismissed Patrick Vieira only two days before the game, did not play significantly better under a caretaker coach, although they did provide a couple of scares over the course of the game. At the conclusion though, the scoreline was a fair reflection of the homes side’s domination and thankfully the opening goal came before half an hour had been played, and with the next one converted before the interval, it would have taken a remarkable turnaround for the Eagles to take anything from this game.    One highly valid fear was that the two hours of football played three days previously by the Gunners would impact on their performance, but...

Arsenal 1 Sporting Lisbon 1 (aet, Sporting win 5-3 on penalties)    Europa League Round of 16 – 2nd Leg    Thursday 16th March 2023 8pm    A blessing in disguise? Time will tell. Arsenal have not won a European trophy for 29 seasons now, and a grand total of two in the club’s history feels like a meagre return. It would have been something to celebrate, but given the choice between being eliminated now or losing in, say a semi-final, I suspect most fans would see the bigger picture and sacrifice ultimately fruitless progress to aid the Premier League campaign. Does the blow of elimination knock that back in any way? Well, the half hour of extra time was something the team could have done without, and with Palace perhaps recruiting a new manager in time for Sunday, that fixture might prove to be far more difficult than the win at Fulham.  We will find out soon enough, but if Mikel Arteta’s team can secure the three points, then the internation...

Fulham 0 Arsenal 3    Premier League    Sunday 12th March 2023 2pm  At times yesterday, Arsenal’s play was the stuff of champions. One thing beyond dispute. The levels they can achieve at their best are good enough to hold off Manchester City, but whether or not these can be maintained until the season’s end is what is up for debate now. It would take a substantial collapse for the Gunners to finish outside of the top two with Manchester United dropping two points yesterday, and the hope is that the blip suffered at the start of last month is the last such run we will see from Mikel Arteta’s team during the current campaign.   Fulham have proven a difficult side to beat this season, and their form since the mid-winter break has taken them to within touching distance of European qualification. So everyone expected a far tougher Sunday afternoon than we witnessed. And in terms of the players’ mental reserves, it was surely a blessing to play this kind of game...

Sporting Lisbon 2 Arsenal 2    Europa League Round of 16 – 1st Leg    Thursday 9th March 2023 5.45pm (local time)   The six changes Mikel Arteta made for this first leg felt about par for the course. Gabriel is rarely rested but was on the bench to give the new signing from Spezia Kiwior his chance. I have no idea how good the young Pole’s English is, but he will certainly need to do better at corners than he did for the opening Sporting goal. Saka always starts, and you must wonder whether he can keep it going without a rest. You’d imagine Tierney would have started this match but for illness, so Zinchenko retained the nominal left back spot. Tomiyasu could have played there, but the manager gave him some involvement from the bench for half an hour of the second half, and thankfully when he did come on the versatility defender had a decent enough performance after a more disappointing one against Bournemouth last weekend.   Sporting played w...

    Arsenal 3 Bournemouth 2    Premier League    Saturday 4th March 2023 3pm    But for small margins, Arsenal would have a one point lead over Manchester City after 26 matches. As it is, injury time winners at Villa and yesterday mean that they have secured maximum points from the three matches after their early February lull, but let’s face it, for late drama, the win over Bournemouth yesterday put even the victory at Villa into the shade.   It was a surreal afternoon. Bournemouth, in theory cannon fodder, a team that struggles to score goals somehow engineered two. From the luxury of the eventual win, the goals conceded can be analysed with less pain, and both were avoidable. The first, within the opening 10 seconds was a matter of Gabriel failing to deal with a simple ball allowing Billing to score. Human error, but nonetheless such mistakes need to be minimized. The only saving grace was that Mikel Arteta’s team had almost an entire...

Arsenal 4 Everton 0    Premier League    Wednesday 1st March 2023 7.45pm    For 40 minutes at a chilly Emirates last night, there was an element of déjà vu from the trip to Goodison Park less than four weeks ago. Sean Dyche’s team did an excellent job of frustrating their hosts and for most of the opening 45 minutes, Arsenal’s attempts on goal were few and far between. One lapse in concentration though, with Saka being allowed space to receive the ball on the edge of the area, and the dam burst. Perhaps the most significant stat to reflect a key difference in the two games was the number of Everton corners. These, buoyed on by the Toffees’ fans, were a huge source of danger in the reverse fixture, and from one of their seven corners, they scored the decisive goal in the first match under Dyche. Last night they only had one corner.    More critically, once Arsenal went ahead, their opponents had to do something that there was never any call fo...