Straight to it on a very good morning
Headline: Taking care of business
It’s not ideal that the title race isn’t in Arsenal’s hands but for what Arsenal can control right now, it is hard to find any fault in the way that they performed here.
Basically from the first whistle, Arsenal were on top of Bournemouth. They have been a good team this season and carry a good amount of threat of their own (they showed flashes of that as well) but Arsenal’s game plan of just batter and pin them into their own half worked wonders here.
In the opening minutes, Arsenal created a number of scoring chances. None were huge but all felt and were scored as much more than speculative.
In the opening quarter of the game it was 11 shots (0.93 xG) to 1 (0.04 xG) with several half chances. Bournemouth did well to get bodies in the way but Arsenal were doing a good job of finding enough space in the box to pull the trigger.
The rest of the first half was much of the same, Arsenal kept tightening the noose and upping the pressure. They added a further 4 shots (0.68 xG) before Kai Havertz running through and rounding the keeper drew enough contact to earn Arsenal a penalty (it might have been fortunate and divey but in my biased view it was not a mistake and not likely to be overturned by VAR).
It was the goal that the performance at a minimum deserved and was a nice exclamation point on a very good half.
Bournemouth showed some danger to start the second half. They had 6 of their 7 shots (that counted) in from the 53rd to 65th minute and made things a bit uncomfortable as the game got a bit too open for my liking.
Thankfully, Declan Rice and Leandro Trossard combined to put Arsenal up two goals and that was that for the game as a contest.
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