West Ham vs Arsenal: Instant Reaction

Thoughts at full time

Straight into it.

Headline: Arsenal get their payback

Arsenal had played West Ham twice before this match and they were arguably the better team by a clear margin, especially in the league matchup. Somehow these matches ended up 5-1 in favor of West Ham.

They scored 5 goals from just 8 shots and 2.3 expected goals. That includes a penalty that was also saved!

It doesn’t work this way but it sure felt like today was a day where the bad luck was due to correct itself. Arsenal had created plenty of good scoring chances and a stupid volume of chances to only have one goal against this team. Going into this it was 3.6 xG and just one goal.

Well, it did not disappoint with Arsenal tying their biggest-ever away win in an emphatic display.

These are big goals for the title race too. Arsenal are in a hard spot chasing the leaders but they also came in with the handicap of a deficit in goal difference as well. This big win brought them even with Manchester City and just a goal behind Liverpool. In the fine margins of three close teams, this could be something that makes the difference.

That is now a more reasonable-looking combined stat line, 7-5 but it is still 6.5 to 2.5 in the xG.

In this match, it took a bit of time for Arsenal to get in the groove for the game, feeling out West Ham. One of the things that was different here was that because West Ham didn’t get the early goal, they couldn’t drop into a very deep block. They caused problems for Arsenal at times in the first quarter of the match progressing the ball into the final third. Arsenal had a lot of the ball in their own half but had just 7 final third entries.

Arsenal did finally solve that problem with the double 10’s looking very good making alternating runs forward and behind to open up the spaces between the lines giving Arsenal all the space they needed.

After the first quarter, Arsenal broke through into the final third with ease and started building the pressure on West Ham. It still took a few chances to break through but from about 20 minutes on, the game was all Arsenal.

I think another thing that can’t be overlooked is that this was also a very good defensive performance. The goals here were special but I think this team loves to see a 0 for opponents in the scoreline as well. West Ham managed just 83 touches in the final third and just 7 touches in the box with 6 of them coming after the 80th minute. One of the things that really made me happy to see was how happy they were to block a shot late and keep the clean sheet intact.

A great day for Arsenal and lots of great performances to break down in this one in the week ahead.

Stock Rising: Martin Odegaard