Arsenal continue to roll and pick up their seventh win on the spin.
Main takeaway: You can’t take anything for granted in the Premier League
This weekend saw quite a few “shock” results.
Chelsea were beaten by Sunderland.
Liverpool were beaten by Brentford.
Manchester City were beaten by Aston Villa.
It’s something that you’ll hear over and over but that doesn’t make it any less true; the number of “easy” matches in the Premier League has never been lower and there are just so many more teams that have impressive talent and high-level coaches up and down the League.
This is especially true of this Crystal Palace team who came into this match having played like one of the top teams in the League.
It’s still small sample size stuff but they had been a better team than Liverpool, Chelsea, and had an argument that they might have been the third best team to start this season.
I think that Arsenal came in here and had a lot of respect for them, maybe too much at times, but they did not take this match lightly even though they were big favorites here.
In a bit of a repeat of the Fulham match, this is not exactly a classic performance or one that we will look back with a ton of fond memories for the flowing attacking play. Even trying to generate a nice 10-15 minutes of highlights of this match might be something that is a stretch.
Arsenal generated just under 1 expected goal here and they had just the 10 shots. There were several nearly moments where with a bit better execution a chance to shoot might have materialized but it was a struggle today and a lot of credit needs to go to Crystal Palace and their set up.
In this match I think that it was a combination of Arsenal continuing the tactic of choosing to play a bit further away from the opposition goal in the middle third, trying to draw the team on to them to open up space, plus the defensive execution from Crystal Palace here.
This match featured Arsenal playing in the middle third by far the most of any match this season and the lowest in the final third.
Crystal Palace were incredibly disciplined here, especially in the first half, they did a very good job to clog the passing lanes and to quickly swarm central when the ball did get into the middle. It was tough to drive or pass through the middle and Arsenal lost a lot of the duels in this part of the pitch.
Some days there will be these kinds of matches, and it is another match where the absence of Odegaard was felt. He’s so good at adding a bit more connection and passing to get the ball from the middle third into the box.
Having the ability to generate chances from set plays for Arsenal was the difference again and while this is something that makes people uncomfortable it has shown itself to be highly sustainable for Arsenal.
Ultimately Arsenal got the win, picked up 2 points on last season’s results, and extended their lead at the top of the Premier League table. It was a good reminder for all of us that this isn’t easy.
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