suburbangooners.com

The clean sheet machine rolls on with 3-0 Prague win

Suburban Gooners Logo Suburban Gooners Logo It’s easy to look towards the two headlines of Merino and the record-breaking back five from last night’s ultimately comfortable 3-0 win against Slavia Prague, but I have to say that to a man, that Arsenal team showed what a confidence-laden side looks like from minute one yesterday.

It wasn’t all plain sailing yesterday and for the opening skirmishes of last night’s away win Slavia Prague were well worth the title of being on top for the first 15 minutes or so. Their home fans were loud, they were determined to ‘get at’ Arsenal and I wondered if it might be a long night for Mikel Arteta’s men when they forced one or two minor errors in our passing. But this Arsenal team has been built on such strong and solid defensive foundations, that in reality, the minor moments of which I speak of never really amounted to anything concrete anyway. Indeed, it wasn’t until the latter stages of the game that even a shot on target was registered and such is the strength of our back line right now, that I personally was a little affronted that the home team even managed that. I was hoping that for the second game in a row we could go a whole game without conceding one on target and I even got nervous about conceding a shot on target as the game neared its end and David Raya hadn’t been forced in to one.

Such is the dominance of this back line, that even when the penalty that Prague got was awarded, I thought to myself that it was a travesty that a clean sheet could be sullied by such a thing as a penalty against us. Then, when it was ruled out as a penalty by Ben White, the wave of relief that swept over me was just not normal.

We’re supposed to just look for wins in football matches. We Arsenal fans are getting so used to how good this team is, that we now want cherries on top of cakes. Lots of cherries. Glace ones in abundance.

The game had of course already been won at that stage, but records are there to be broken and Arsenal’s eight games in a row without conceding being a new club record is something to be rightly applauded and lauded. These guys just don’t want anything to faulter and in a competition in which has elite athletes and so many variables (a slip here, an odd-bounce there, a fluke mis-kicked cross heading goalward, etc) in it, the fact that this Arsenal team has control of all of those variables is nothing short of staggering.

It builds the platform on which victories can be forged. And when Arsenal were given a helping hand by one of the Slavia Prague defenders from a corner, Saka duly dispatched the penalty to keep his numbers ticking over. He had a good game, created some good chances and got five out of six shots on target, but to me this felt like one of those games where he did ‘just enough’. Hey, I’m absolutely fine with that and if that’s his floor then he can do that all day long as far as us Gooners are concerned.

On the other flank I thought Trossard had another superb game and he really has developed in to the unsung hero of this season so far. His cross to Merino was inch-perfect and he now has seven goal contributions this season already. I said a few weeks back that we need output from across this Arsenal team and he’s on course to get easily close to 20 G+As in all comps at this rate. Given we now hear that Big Vik is likely to be out this weekend, that end product is very much needed and welcome from the Belgium.

But that also applies to makeshift centre forward Mikel Merino, who has scored what I read somewhere is his 19th goal in 2025. 19 goals! That’s insane. This guy is seen as a rotational centre midfielder for us and yet he pops up with vital goals for both club and country. He got us off the mark away to Newcastle and last night he effectively confirmed the victory with that deft touch to take the ball behind the Slavia ‘keeper. It was exactly the sort of position you expect Gyokeres to take up and whilst Merino doesn’t offer the same running power as the Swede, he does offer goal threat and he proved it last night with his brace. That is important in the context of the Champions League, but I also think it is important in the context of this coming weekend too; we are going to need him to get in to the right positions as a centre forward and these two goals will give him the confidence that he can do the job and do it well whilst we suffer a minor crisis in our lack of attacking options.

There was so much to be positive about last night and the winning margin we got to with 20 minutes to go meant that Arteta could rotate some players in and also break some more records. And so we must also congratulate Max Dowman on becoming the youngest player to ever play in the Champions League, as well as Harriman-Annous getting on the pitch too for his Champions League debut. What an amazing night for those two players and for Max in particular, he keeps knocking down those milestones. The thing that I find also mad is that this isn’t even a token gesture by the manager; Dowman came on last night and within two minutes he’d dribbled past his man and been hacked down. The Prague players – who for most of the evening had decided they were going to try to bully the Arsenal lads (naive) – were just there to try to take Dowman out on two or three occasions, but the young kid just got up, got the ball and went for his man again. What a special young talent we have.

And what a special group of players we have too. They will be absolutely brimming with confidence at the moment and they go into the weekend with an impressive 10-game winning run dating back to 21st September. We know it won’t last forever, it might even faulter this weekend, but for now we can just appreciate just how good these players and this squad is and hand out those flowers to Arteta, his coaching staff and those players.

Roll on the weekend.

Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!

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.