Just a few hours ago, I posted about my disappointment in Freddie Ljungberg's choice of player selection for his first two games in charge as Arsenal's interim boss until the end of the season and I must confess, even though we are not where we want yet, I saw an improved selection last night in the game against West Ham United.
While the three changes he made may have felt little, they mattered a lot and really impacted the game. For a start, I advocated he started with Mesut Ozil in behind the striker with Nicolas Pepe and Gabriel Martinelli providing support on the flanks.
Pepe was a menace to the West Ham defence and the Hammers were lucky to not have seen more yellow cards or fouls given against them as the referee perhaps thought Pepe was going down too easily. He was always tackled hard and in most cases fouled but even for the ones that occurred in front of the linemen, they just waved them away. A story for another day.
A bright side to Arsenal's season so far has been Gabriel Martinelli and it was no surprise that the young Brazilian grabbed a goal in another outstanding outing for him. He was instrumental in all goals scored last night and his work rate was enormous. You barely saw him strolling and he tracked back to win balls for the team.
The midfield witnessed an impressive level of steel with Granit Xhaka and Lucas Torreira, the former lying deeper, allowing Torreira to push forward and make passes, one of which led to the equaliser. I'm really glad to see Xhaka back in the team, not because he's my favourite player but to see him settle back after a very torrid few weeks. His commitment to the team and his show of care to the other players was captain-like, guess that's the reason he's so popular among them. Kieran Tierney starting ahead of Sead Kolasinac was a plus as we saw what he was capable of. It's just quite unfortunate that the youngster had to go out injured, hopefully, it's not something very serious.
And, for the first time in close to 60 days, our goalkeeper, Bernd Leno did not have to face a barrage of grenades in shots fired at him, it was a nice feeling to see him get a break.
MY OPINION
It is no Uhuru yet as there still looks like a lot of work needs to be done. We can't allow small teams to push us around and try to bully us. This is not to take away our courage for coming from a goal down, in fact, it exuded a lot of character from the guys.
We all saw what Pepe can cause from playing on the right side of the midfield. Although I still feel he has a lough of toughening to do as he seems easily bullied off the ball and the referees seem not to be helping matters, they just look away from him. Well, Nico, this is the EPL, buck up.
Nonetheless
Auba scores again ++
3 points ++
Pepe finding his feet ++
Good to see Xhaka get his acts together ++