Arsenal 4-1 Crystal Palace (Martinelli 28′, Saka 43′, 74′, Xhaka 55′)
EMIRATES STADIUM — Arsenal can defeat most things these days, but print deadlines wait for nobody. As part of the matchday programme’s coverage of their opponents, a warm welcome for Arsenal great (and now former Crystal Palace manager) Patrick Vieira.
Vieira may have been licking his wounds after being sacked last Friday, but he was serenaded by the home supporters towards the end. They can live happily in the past and present these days.
Those supporters must be red raw and bruised from the amount they have pinched themselves during this ludicrous campaign: Arsenal have an eight-point lead at the top heading into the final international break of the season.
Thursday night’s Europa League exit to Sporting could be easily transformed into a positive, as long as the reaction was instant. Mikel Arteta’s team have scored three or more goals in each of their last four league matches. They’re not clamming up; they’re getting better.
An injury to Takehiro Tomiyasu? Don’t worry, Ben White will step in and be Arsenal’s best player, a hand in the first two goals and superb when stopping Wilfried Zaha.
The big decision of whether to recall Gabriel Jesus? Arteta kept the faith in Leandro Trossard as a nominal centre forward with Gabriel Martinelli off the left – Martinelli was exceptional in scoring the opening goal that allowed a mood of relief to wash over the stadium.
Hang around in the Emirates for long enough, and relief, angst and any other negative emotion will be washed away by joy. Such is the impact on the soul of watching Bukayo Saka create or score a goal and then look around like an expectant toddler for a hug, you catch yourself beaming with misplaced pride.
There is something moving on some molecular level about watching Saka in a team like this repeatedly doing unexpectedly wonderful things. It has roots in his missed penalty for England in 2021, the racist abuse he received in the aftermath and the manner in which he went away and vowed to himself that his excellence would shout louder than their hatred.
Whether Arsenal win the title or not, Saka will be a deserving Player of the Year. It’s now 22 goals and assists in the league alone. He’s still 21, for goodness sake.
If each of Arsenal’s opponents from now until June are as compliant as Palace, the title is theirs. It would be misleading to claim that Vieira was a victim of the fixture list, but sacking a manager just after they have played 11 straight matches against top-half opponents strikes as a bit rum.
The counsel for the prosecution points out that Palace won none of those matches and scored only three times in the process. But the defence is that Palace conceded only seven goals in his last eight league games.
By the time Saka had scored his second and Arsenal’s fourth, Palace had recorded their heaviest away defeat in almost two-and-a-half years.
There were odd flashes of resistance on the counter attack, not least when they hit Aaron Ramsdale’s left post at 0-0, but mostly Crystal Palace look like a team in which the creative players have seized up through a lack of use.
Too often, they either make the wrong decision or no decision at all and so are crowded out. Michael Olise and Eberechi Eze were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, once. Now, one is substituted off for the other with an exchange of glances that says “I’ve seen some things out there, man”.
Zaha is both Palace’s brightest spark and their frustrated-in-chief, slamming his fists against the floor in disgust at having to carry the attack and beat two men on his own. His contract is up at the end of the season, and has the broken expression of a man who has tried so hard to do so much and may leave having witnessed precious little progress.
There is no problem with sacking Vieira if you believe that he was underachieving and was so unlikely to address the slump when the easier fixtures arrived that the firing and rehiring made financial and strategic sense. But there clearly is an issue when that sacking is not immediately followed by a formulated emergency action plan that includes having a replacement lined up.
Instead, we got reports that Roy Hodgson may return as an ancient caretaker and divide the club’s support ahead of the most important months of their recent history. If a club seems to make little sense off the field, don’t be surprised when they look so lost on it. Futureproofing and planning are necessities, not luxuries, when you’re sinking like a stone.
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