Arsenal vs Crystal Palace: Instant Reaction

Back into it.

Headline: No Hangover Here

With St. Patrick’s Day past us and hopefully everyone survived without a hangover. Arsenal in this match certainly did.

There were a lot of questions coming out of the Europa League. How would they cope with the injuries, how about the extra minutes, could they bounce back from the loss, could they deal with the extra pressure of all the eggs in the Premier League basket?

The answer was a resounding yes.

Arsenal took a bit of time to adjust to the flow of this match. Crystal Palace came out strong and pressed Arsenal. I was a little surprised by this, but I think they wanted to see if they could force a mistake from Arsenal’s changed and tired backline.

Arsenal handled that pressure mostly early but things could have changed had Wilfred Zhaka’s early shot had crept in. Arsenal got control after that and started really pushing Crystal Palace back. It took some time for the pressure to turn into danger with the final ball just off, but come it did.

From the 25th to 55th minutes Arsenal were all over Crystal Palace and killed this match.

With the 4 goals today Arsenal get back on track for the 90 goal pace, they also now have the potential best scoring season in their sights. The previous best for a 38 match season is 87 in 04/05 and 85 in 02/03, both of these seem very doable for this Arsenal season with 10 matches to go.

Perhaps more importantly with a 3 goal win, Arsenal are now at +40 goal difference and have closed the gap to Manchester City. This probably doesn’t matter because if City are going to close the current gap Arsenal probably dropped points but it does help that if it is close it isn’t unthinkable that Arsenal could overturn that gap. This also puts Arsenal close to the best goal difference of any Arsenal team in a 38 match season. The best is 90/91 (an underrated team) with +56, 04/05 at +51, and 03/04 at +47.

Arsenal are in the driver’s seat with 10 matches to play. The run in starts now.

Stock Rising: Ben White