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All the boxes ticked in Arsenal’s Bilbao victory

Suburban Gooners Logo Suburban Gooners Logo Well now, that was more like it, eh?

Arsenal’s final pre season friendly of this summer ended with a pretty emphatic 3-0 win against a Champions League Athletic Bilbao, with boxes ticked all over the shop, including:

Big Gabby returning to start

Calafiori on the pitch for valuable minutes

Timber shaking off his knock and starting

Zubimendi looking imperious again running the show

Ødegaard finding pockets and delivering good link up play.

Big Vik running the lines and delivering us his first goal and trademark celebration.

Good connectiveness for the second goal which involved key players like Rice, Ødegaard, Big Vik, Martinelli and Saka for the finish

Havertz showing a turn of pace and good finish to cap off a great day.

I think if you asked Arteta for the perfect afternoon, he’d have told you he wanted the performance and cohesion first, then it’s the defensive solidity, then it’s the attackers all connecting and scoring, then it’s a nice big score line. Probably in that order.

He got everything so no wonder he was pleased post-match. This was the more familiar Arsenal side that we’ve seen in recent seasons and this morning, I’m kind of breathing a sigh of relief, because I’ll be honest and admit that the performances (more than the results) were a little concerning so far. We’ve looking disjointed in our build up, we’ve lacked a cutting edge and when you look at how the Villareal game played out, our high line had a feel of the Scum from last season. I had my concerns and ahead of the big kick off next week I was quite desperate to see us put on a show.

It didn’t even have to be full of goals either. If we’d have won 1-0 with a scrappy goal, but we’d battered Bilbao and their keeper Unai Simon had had the game of his life, I’d have been fine with that because:

We’d have shown defensive solidity and kept a clean sheet

Shown we are playing well to create chances

We’d have had a ton of shots and just caught an inspired ‘keeper. That doesn’t happen every week.

We got everything we wanted though, including a great ball from Zubi and a deft flick from Gyokeres on his head, which set us off just after the half hour mark. We’ve spent the last few weeks since he signed talking about how the one thing in his game is he needs to be better with headed finishing and if this is a sign to come, then that’s a-ok with me.

I thought it was a great game by the Swede. He got his goal and is off the mark (although we all know it’s ’not really’ until he gets one in an official match), it was a fine finish and was just one of the positive things he can take from yesterday. Arteta seemed happy with him afterwards and after that performance it makes you wonder about his possibility for starting at Old Trafford next weekend. I had Kai down to start as he’s the incumbent, he’s somebody who knows our football well enough, he’s a big game player and Arteta knows what he’s getting. But when you see a performance like that from Big Vik, it could suddenly be a different outcome that Arteta looks for next weekend than Kai starting because he’s been here longer.

Either way, isn’t it good to see both of them on the scoresheet? I thought Kai’s goal was expertly taken and the way he controlled the ball as he raced away, as well as calmly slotting it in to the bottom hand corner, had me thinking “this guy wants to up his game this season”. We’ve all seen how he’s added a little more to his game, but perhaps it’s also the increased competition he now has that will make him strive to be even better next season. If that’s true, then we’re in good shape, because two quality forwards battling it out and scoring goals is how you get closer to that dream Premier League title.

And the second goal was a great bit of interlinking through the middle. I’ve mentioned the players involved already, but the way in which we moved the ball from back to front was quick, it caught Bilbao off-guard and resulted in Martinelli and Saka getting in behind through the centre. Saka was the eventual goal scorer, but to me that part of it was less relevant, rather that we crafted a good team goal and we got in behind. How many times last season did we find ourselves slow in build up and that meant that when we got to the edge of the box we had 11 bodies in front of us? I’ve lost count. So to see us cut a team open was pleasing.

Of course you could argue that we won’t face a side like Bilbao every week and we won’t always be going ahead in the first third of the match. There will be times this season in which we go behind and what ends up happening is teams just sit camped on the edge of their box. For that we still have questions to answer but yesterday I saw enough to make me a little more relaxed and a little more excited for next weekend. United won’t camp on the edge of their box and so if we can get the same spaces, there might be opportunities for us at a place that has for so many decades been really difficult to get wins at.

So we sign off with an emphatic victory and now the players and manager have a week of preparation and analysis on the new-look Man United team, with a new front three who they’ve just spunked over £200million on.

Back tomorrow as we begin the work week countdown to that game next Sunday.

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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.