Arsenal put on a dominant display at the London Stadium on Saturday evening, defeating West Ham 5-2 in a simply crazy game of football.
The first half saw seven goals; Arsenal scored four in the first 36 minutes, with Gabriel, Leandro Trossard, Martin Ødegaard and Kai Havertz giving the Gunners a commanding lead early on.
West Ham reduced the arrears with two quick goals of their own, first from Aaron Wan-Bissaka and then an excellent Emerson free kick – but they wouldn’t be two behind for long, with Bukayo Saka scoring a penalty right at the end of the half to reextend Arsenal’s lead. It marked the seventh goal of the half, the most in any game this season in the Premier League.
The second half was far more subdued, devoid largely of chances and goals altogether, with the score the same at fulltime as it was an hour earlier.
As it happened
The injury crisis is well and truly over. With Ødegaard and William Saliba back in the side, Arsenal are flowing again. They’re slick, coordinated, dangerous – and they’re title contenders again. They were good when they beat Sporting CP 5-1 midweek; they might have been even better today.
They took command of the contest right from the start. After keeping 85% of the ball in the first 10 minutes, Gabriel scored his fourth goal of the season with their first shot in the 11th. It was typical, really; Saka whipped in a corner, Arsenal’s big men crowded around the far post, before they flocked to the near post and the Brazilian – as usual – lost his marker to nod home his fourth goal of the season.
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After 15 minutes of utter dominated, they inevitably doubled their lead. This time it was Trossard finishing off a Wenger-esque move, with Ødegaard dinking the ball in behind a static West Ham defence to Saka, who squared it to the Belgian to tap into an empty net. It couldn’t have been easier; eight defenders camped around their own box and not one of them spotted the danger. Schoolboy stuff.
Their third goal came courtesy of a Ødegaard penalty in the 34th minute. Saka was the instigator once more, jinking past Lucas Paquetá with enough speed to lure a dangling leg right in his path. Despite winning it, he let the Norwegian take it, and he dispatched it with aplomb, slotting it into the side netting. Łukasz Fabiański went the right way, but it didn’t matter one bit; two keepers wouldn’t have saved it, such was the accuracy of the strike.
It took less than two minutes for three to become four, after Kai Havertz slotted a cool effort past Łukasz Fabiański, with Trossard dinking a ball over the top for the German to chase. Max Kilman slid to intervene, misjudged it entirely and gifted the striker acres of space and all the time to make up his mind; the result was rather predictable.
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After 36 minutes of football, Arsenal had scored four while West Ham hadn’t had so much as a sniff. This stadium hadn’t seen domination like it since… well, the last time these two teams met, when the scoreline was also 4-0 in the first half.
But hold on! Things would soon take quite the unpredictable turn. Having not tested even the halfway line to this point, West Ham would score two goals in quick succession to keep themselves alive.
First, Aaron Wan-Bissaka latched onto the end of a piercing Carlos Soler through-ball before finishing into the near post. Then, Emerson hit a tremendous free kick off the bar and in to reduce the deficit to two. In the space of six minutes, the game saw four goals, and the complexion changed entirely.
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Arsenal would recover right at the end of the half, though, with Bukayo Saka converting the game’s second penalty after Fabiański punched Gabriel in the face from a corner.
There might not have been a more frantic first half of football in recent Premier League history, but in typical West Ham fashion, they clawed up the mountain they gave themselves to climb before slipping back down the slope.
As is often the case for games with first halves so frenzied, the second could hardly keep up. Chances were few and extremely far between; Ødegaard had a pop from distance, Tomáš Souček was denied a floating header and substitute Raheem Sterling curled a free kick just wide of the post, but there was nothing clearcut until Danny Ings rounded David Raya before hitting a strike all the way across the goal line and out for a goal kick.
Perhaps both sides lost their motivation; perhaps they were simply footballed out.
Regardless, 5-2 still remains a result you don’t see every day, and it’s one which has brought Arsenal back into the top two of the Premier League, now six points adrift of Liverpool pending their blockbuster clash with Manchester City on Sunday and, barring two minutes of madness in the first half, they were always more than comfortable.
For West Ham, it’s a big defeat but one which won’t feel nearly as embarrassing as they might have expected it to when they conceded their fourth goal. Julen Lopetegui’s job is still under scrutiny; his side are still much closer to the relegation zone than they would like. But they scored twice against one of the most defensively resolute sides in the league – and that’s better than nothing.
The lineups
WHU: Fabiański; Emerson, Kilman, Todibo, Wan-Bissaka; Paquetá, Soucek; Summerville, Soler, Bowen; Antonio
ARS: Raya; Calafiori, Gabriel, Saliba, Timber; Rice, Jorginho, Ødegaard; Trossard, Havertz, Saka