Ramsey’s cool finish helps Arsenal regain their swagger
When the Unai Emery revolution began, few Arsenal supporters could have dreamt the mood around the club would have changed so dramatically in little more than four months.
“We’ve got our Arsenal back,” sang their fans in the Putney End after Aaron Ramsey had impudently flicked home their third goal of the afternoon after a wonderful, flowing move, and it was hard to disagree.
That goal-of-the-season contender summed up the confidence that is starting to course through this team as they recorded a ninth successive victory, their best run for 3½ years, and breezed past Fulham with a swagger no one would associate with the latter days of the Arsene Wenger era.
True, it came against a Fulham side who face a fight for survival unless they can fix their obvious defensive issues, but Emery’s team have quietly moved into the top four and are suggesting they can stay there.
Central to that is the form of strikers Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-emerick Aubameyang, both of whom scored twice, while the addition of Lucas Torreira – a genuine defensive midfielder – has made an enormous difference to a team who finally seem to be having fun again.
They are clearly a long way from the finished article, as shown by the manner in which they allowed Fulham back into the contest shortly before half-time, but the progress made under Emery is still impressive, even if the Spaniard is keen to play down talk of loftier ambitions.
“We lost the first two matches against Manchester City and Chelsea and we called for calm,” said Emery. “When we are winning now we need to be in the same way, [with] our mentality – calm, work, enjoy, enjoy working, [enjoy] our feeling with our supporters like today.
“Was it our best performance? I don’t think ‘best’. We can get better from this performance. We need to continue improving and we will.”
Emery’s caution is understandable, considering that one way of reading Arsenal’s season is that they have lost to the teams they would be expected to and beaten those they ought to.
But the next four games before the visit of Liverpool on Nov 3 are all winnable and none of Leicester, Crystal Palace, Sporting Lisbon or Blackpool will enjoy facing Arsenal if they are this potent going forward.
That attacking dynamism came with Emery using a 4-4-2 system for the first time, and Arsenal clearly targeted Fulham’s right flank, with Lacazette, Alex Iwobi and Danny Welbeck taking it in turns to run at Denis Odoi. The defender was outnumbered and it came as no surprise when Iwobi found the overlapping Nacho Monreal and he crossed for Lacazette to swivel and shoot home shortly before the half-hour mark.
Arsenal briefly threatened to run away with it, but old habits die hard and they were pegged back before the break when Monreal’s poor pass allowed Luciano Vietto to play in Andre Schurrle to clip over the advancing Bernd Leno.
Parity lasted just four minutes into the second period, when Welbeck’s flick bounced nicely for Lacazette to lash a volley past Marcus Bettinelli from outside the area. It was an excellent finish but was soon overshadowed as Arsenal broke from their own penalty area, with Ramsey, Lacazette and Hector Bellerin all involved before Henrikh Mkhitaryan played in Aubameyang to cross for the Welshman to coolly flick home off the far post. Ramsey had been on the field for only 39 seconds.
Fulham’s heads dropped and it was a question of how many Arsenal would score. They settled for five as Aubameyang turned to score, before running on to Ramsey’s pass to fire into the corner late on.
It meant that both Aubameyang and Ramsey had provided a goal and assist after coming off the bench – the first time two substitutes had done so in a single Premier League match. It was a sorry statistic that compounded a grim afternoon for their hosts.
“We did not show, in some parts, the Premier League level,” admitted their head coach, Slavisa Jokanovic. “This is realistic. We need to be more solid, more competitive, if you will. We are too easy to play against at the moment and, for this level, that makes it complicated.”
Jokanovic declined to give his view on whether Arsenal were genuine title contenders, but the fact the question was even asked says a lot about the visitors’ progress. There is a long way to go, but the Emery revolution is proceeding very well indeed. Mkhitaryan had the simplest task of the entire move, laying the ball out wide for Pierre-emerick Aubameyang to play a first-time cross into the middle.
And there it was met by Ramsey, who cleverly flicked the ball into the corner of the net off the far post with his left instep to cap a glorious move. It had taken just 20 seconds and involved five players in a sweeping move of nine passes. Ramsey had been on the field for just 39 seconds, the quickest goal by an Arsenal substitute in 11 years.