Everton vs Arsenal: Instant Reaction

I woke up at 4:15 for this?

Arsenal have not won at Everton since 2017 and after today’s match it feels like it won’t happen again ever.

Headline: Arsenal lay an egg

This match absolutely hurts.

This was not a fluke, or something that was a sucker punch. This was Everton fully outplaying Arsenal. Yes Arsenal could have gotten a penalty but honestly, that would have been lipstick on a very poor performance to see them rescue a point that would have not been deserved.

The first half was insipid from Arsenal, they had almost all of the ball but turned that into little threat. Everton’s 4-5-1 meant there was a ton bodies behind the ball as they spent most of the early part of the match in their defensive shell.

Arsenal seemed slow to be able to move them about side to side, and when the ball did get to Saka or Martinelli it was 2 or 3 on one basically every time.

After the initial spell of Arsenal pressure, Everton grew into the game and started to push Arsenal back and pick good times to press.

In the latter parts of the first half the ball was pretty close to exclusively in the Arsenal half. Everton put together a number of high-quality chances exploiting space down Arsenal’s right side.

Everton ended up with 3 big chances in the first half which is tied for the most Arsenal have given up in a half this season, and also equal to what Everton had created in their three matches previous to this.

It was a wake-up call and not one that was heeded.

In the end this will go down as easily one of Arsenal’s worst performances this season. This is just the second time this season that an Arsenal opponent beat them on xG by more than 1 expected goal.

Hopefully, this is just a blip and the two losses in a row doesn’t snowball into anything worse from here.

This loss is going to hurt in the title chase. This was a match that where Arsenal were heavily expected to win, with the gunners defending 2.5 expected points pre-match.

Arsenal had a 3.9 expected point gap over Manchester City and now that will be down to 1.4 before their match against Tottenham. Manchester City have not had a good track record at the toilet bowl, last winning there in 2018 with the last four ending with Spurs wins (even if they might be undeserved on the underlying metrics).

A win by City would close the expected points gap to very close to 0 (depending on how the team ratings change after the weekend) and would make the title race a very tight affair.

Stock Rising: Umm… No one