Alexis Sanchez grabbed a brace as Arsenal returned to winning ways with a 2-0 victory over Westbrom at the scanty Emirates stadium. The gunners had thrown away leads in two previous games in the Premier League and needed all three points last night to move up to third on the log.
Match Report – Player Rating – Wenger’s Comment
This was Arsenal’s 500th Premier League win and the goals looked easy but the game showed more could be expected from the Gunners. Alezis Sanchez has had a hand in 9 goals in his last 7 appearances with 6 goals and 3 assists. It was a quiet night for Mesut Ozil but the German was unable to add to his assist tally. Ramsey was involved with the two goals and played all 90 minutes along side Giroud who couldn’t get on the score sheet.
The stadium was half-filled at kick off, but attendance rose to over 50,000 at the end. There were rumours of a 70th minute walk out which never came to pass. Rather, you could notice empty seats around the stadium. The attendance didn’t affect the Gunners who were better all night although rattled once when a header stroke Cech’s post.
It was also a night where the Gunners scored two goals from outside the box – a rarity. This was the first time Arsenal scored two goals from outside the box in a single game since April 2015 in a 4-1 win over Liverpool where the Gunners scored 3 goals from outside the box. According to 7amkickoff, the Gunners have scored 79 goals from outside the 18 yard box between 2006 and 2016 – an average 7.9 goals per season.
On the title race, Wenger still has hope:
We want to finish as high as possible. You never know what happens in front of you. There can still be twists and turns but we want to win our games. We came out of West Ham and Crystal Palace thinking we had produced the quality and didn’t get the points. If you look at our last five games, we won at Everton, we won against Watford, we had two draws and we won today. The regret we have is being in the lead against West Ham and being in the lead against Crystal Palace and not getting the points. I don’t know where we’ll finish but we have to give everything in every game. We go to Sunderland, Sunderland fight not to go down. That will be a battle and we have to prepare for that.
On Sunday, the Gunners travel to the Stadium of Light to face Sunderland. Till then.
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