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The perfect three-pointer against Forest

Suburban Gooners Logo Suburban Gooners Logo Yesterday morning I spoke of the fact that Forest could be a bit of a banana skin on account of the fact that we don’t really know how they would play. In the fullness of time and with the benefit of hindsight, we can say that regardless of what they were going to do, this Arsenal team has been built to overcome challenges like what Forest came to us with yesterday and I have to say, I was pretty impressed with the performance. Three goals, three points, the goals scored at moments in which you feel very comfortable. Yes please.

Arteta’s starting line up cause a few raised eyebrows amongst the fanbase, with Declan Rice rested, but with Bilbao in midweek and City the week after, he’d clearly looked at this small block of games and decided that rotation is needed. This is new for him. This is an evolution. I – maybe like you too – have long thought that he doesn’t trust enough of his squad to rotate, but yesterday proves he now feels like he can and the result was a victory that I have to say looked very impressive from where I sat (I had to watch the first half on a plane!). The fanbase has long told him “if you’re going to have a squad, use it!” and he definitely responded yesterday, playing Merino in back-to-back games, which he admitted afterwards had something to do with his impressive form for Spain and his goals over the international break. Perfect – meritocracy – that’s what we all want.

The rest of the team was as most of us expected and in came Eze for Martinelli and in that first half I thought Eze was quiet. He showed some flashes of quality with his turn of pace to beat a man a couple of times, but most of our play came down the right hand side, where Noni Madueke was absolutely terrific I thought. He is a nightmare to deal with for defenders because he has a very quick stop-start turn of pace and he had whatever full back Forest played on toast all day. He beat his man time and time again and whilst the end product wasn’t always there, what his performance did for the team yesterday was start to commit more Forest players over tot hat side and I noticed towards the end of that first half that Forest started doubling up on him to try to stop him. But he just kept on beating his man and for a guy who I didn’t understand why we bought him, he’s absolutely proving me wrong and honestly I couldn’t be happier about it.

400+ words in and I still haven’t mentioned the first goal. That is very remiss of me because it was a peach of a finish from Zubimendi and I tell you think right now, we’ll have ourselves a candidate for goal of the season when we get to May, that’s for sure. On the volley, swerving finish, Sels with no chance, it was of the highest quality and I saw an interview afterwards where the interviewing confirmed that he only scored two goals in the whole season last season. Welp, he’s equalled that already because his second and Arsenal’s third to seal the game, was a really good one from a guy who isn’t that tall and yet leapt like a slamon in the box to float the ball over Sels.

That third goal came on 79 minutes and as I mentioned before, if you’re going to plot out the ‘perfect’ 3-0 victory, I think you’d probably pick similar times for the goals we scored. Almost – I’d probably prefer an early goal, maybe on 15 minutes, but around the half hour mark is also fine. Then, you’d definitely pick a ‘straight after halftime’ and that’s what we got with Big Vik’s third goal of the season. It felt somewhat similar to his first goal at the start; a long ball from Calafiori down the left hand channel, only this time it was Eze sprinting down that left hand side and then when the Firest defender didn’t win the header to let the ball bounce of his shoulder, Ebs needed just one touch to instantly cross the ball over to the Swede to tap in from inside the six yard box. It was a classic poacher/striker finish and it’s exactly what we brought the Swede for. Power, positioning, box threat. He is not the most skilful player in the world, there were a couple of times in which his touch went awry, but there were more times in which he linked up with his fellow attackers and other times in which he made an impact with his power running; I’m particularly thinking about the effort he had that cracked the top of the post in the second half.

The relationship between Eze and Gyokeres was interesting. I think a few people have speculated that Eze would enjoy playing with Gyokeres like he enjoyed playing with Mateta, but yesterday we got visible evidence of this with the second goal, but also with some of the connections between the two and I think it’s no co-incidence that both players improved after halftime. This was the first time they’d properly got minutes together and with Gyokeres being a guy who naturally favours that left hand side, you could see the connections starting to form.

That’s really positive as well because if you think about how on our right hand side you have Odegaard (really unlucky to get injured on the same shoulder again but Ethan came in and did really well I thought) and Saka who combine, it’s good to see that Eze and Gyokeres might be starting a good connection with each other. Of course yesterday it was Madueke and with Odegaard going off he was isolated, but what we saw is that he’s fine being a lone wolf on the right hand side; Arsenal players can feed him the ball with little support and he will action it. Of course he did get some support and I noticed Timber overlapping on a few occasions which was positive, but in the main Noni is happy to get the ball and go at his man and at a time in which we have Saka and Odegaard out, his form is a welcome one. He got a deserved standing ovation and I loved what I saw.

But that goes for most of the team. We reduced Forest to basically nothing and the fact that their best chance came through a bit of a spawny whack off of Wood’s chest to deflect the ball towards the crossbar, shows just how controlled we were defensively, where we have now conceded just one goal all season and it has come from a wonder strike free kick at Anfield. I’ll take that for our opening exchanges.

And I’ll take the three points for the weekend to take us temporarily top. Liverpool will batter Burnley today I suspect, but at least we are doing our bit.

Now, on to Bilbao. Catch you all tomorrow.

P.s. I didn’t even mention ‘Big Ange’s return. Props to the home fans for singing “Are you Tottenham in disguise” yesterday. I liked that.

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Gooner born in 1982 from Harlow, Essex, now living in Uxbridge. I say what I see - frequently wrong, but hey, it's just an opinion piece, right? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.