Happy Gunners get the jump on top-four rivals
CENTRE-BACKS CORNER MARKET
WHEN it looks like the race for the top four may be entering the final straight, Arsenal keep sticking in corners.
With Tottenham back to winning ways against Leicester and a trip to Spurs to come, defeat in a tricky derby here could have swung momentum back towards Antonio Conte’s side.
Instead, two powerfully taken goals from corners were enough to keep Mikel Arteta in the hunt.
Both centre-backs getting their names on the scoresheet may not be the Arsene Wenger way, but that lucky-13 tally of goals from set-pieces at the moment is forming the bedrock of Arsenal’s challenge for a return to a competition the former Arsenal manager made his No.1 target.
West Ham, too, are plotting their way into next season’s Champions League group stages, albeit from a very different angle.
Their route takes them via Germany, where they must come back from a one-goal deficit in their semi-final against Eintracht Frankfurt to keep alive their hopes of winning the Europa League.
As a result, David Moyes made five changes to his team, a timely boost for the Arsenal players in their dressing room after news reached them of Tottenham’s win. Nevertheless, for more than half an hour both teams cancelled each other out. So the opening goal took everybody rather by surprise. A straightforward corner, swung in by Bukayo Saka, was headed powerfully in for Rob Holding’s first goal since 2019.
Moments later, Aaron Ramsdale did well to keep out a Declan Rice header at the other end and we were into our stride. But it was not until the break that West Ham were able to drag the scores back level, Vladimir Coufal playing the ball into Jarrod Brown who kept up a rich vein of scoring form by steering the ball inside the far post.
Chances continued to come at either end in the second half. Ramsdale raced from his goal only to come within an inch of tripping up Bowen. Just two minutes later, from another corner, Gabriel Martinelli’s chip back across goal was met with such power by Gabriel’s header that it hit the thigh of Lucasz Fabianski as he fell back and cannoned into the roof of his net.
Eddie Nketiah was unable to settle Arsenal nerves with two late chances. By contrast, he conjured a fractious finish by trying to wind up the whole West Ham team on his own by standing over a free-kick and then having some sort of verbal row with Rice.
Amid all the late untidiness, Arsenal had navigated their way back past Tottenham into that fourth place again.