Arsenal show unlucky Eddie how it’s done
AFINE footballing goal won this tight game for an improving Arsenal team but Eddie Howe will know the truth. A manager consumed by fine details, Bournemouth’s coach will know that it was a communal and unforgivable dereliction of duty that cost his team here.
You can never switch off in the Premier League, not for a second. It doesn’t matter who you are playing. After conceding an unnecessary free-kick 40 yards from their own goal midway through the second half, Bournemouth momentarily allowed their minds to wander and within 30 seconds the ball was in their net.
It was a pretty goal from Arsenal. Alex Iwobi’s pass inside the full back to the galloping Sead Kolasinac was particularly lovely and the subsequent low cross to Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang at the far post was perfect. It was a goal that deserved to win any match.
But watch again and you will see Bournemouth players with their backs turned or their gaze averted when play restarts. Five Arsenal players were involved as they funnelled the ball across the field and back again and not one of them had a single glove laid on them by an opponent.
So that was what it took to separate these teams. Bournemouth — whose bright start to the season is now under threat after three defeats — will feel they deserved something and probably did. Some things did not go their way and they were pressing very hard for parity at the end.
Arsenal, meanwhile, have improved on the field and in between the ears under the guidance of new manager Unai Emery and the statistics support that.
The London club are now unbeaten in 17 games since the middle of August and have scored at least twice in every one of their Premier League matches away from home.
If that continues, they will challenge for a top-four place that most would have presumed to be beyond them at the start of the campaign. Progress, indeed.
Here, they did not start well but their recovery was impressive and sustained.
They are still flawed and probably need a couple of extra players. But Emery was brave enough to leave Mesut Ozil on the bench after a dismal display in his last away game at Crystal Palace and he was rewarded with a team performance that spoke of some greater solidity within the London club this season.
There was a little luck for Arsenal early on and Howe (right) was rightly upset that an eighthminute effort from David Brooks was ruled out for offside. The 21year-old was dangerous in an opening spell that Bournemouth dominated and beat Bernd Leno from seven yards after playing a ball into the area and running on to the return.
He looked offside when he scored but he wasn’t. Arsenal’s Shkodran Mustafi was playing him on as he lay on the floor and the goal should have stood.
These things are hard to take at the best of times, even more so when you face a side as good as Arsenal.
Emery’s team, for their part, rode that luck and improved as the game progressed. Having said that, their opening goal was freakish.
The Colombian Jefferson Lerma played against England in the World Cup and is a formidable athlete. Here, though, he contributed a stunning own goal on the half-hour, stretching to intercept a cross from Kolasinac and volleying it powerfully past his own goalkeeper from 14 yards. It was a once-in-a-career moment and it looked for a while as though it would sink Bournemouth. With the Uruguayan midfielder Lucas Torreira increasingly influential for Arsenal, they started to dominate possession and find space between Bournemouth’s back four and midfield. Another goal at this stage might have ended things but Bournemouth are capable of hurting the very best teams on the counter and they struck back in first-half added time. As an Arsenal attack broke down in their opponents’ area, Bournemouth saw the opportunity to break and did so through Ryan Fraser and then Callum Wilson. Then, when the ball was moved infield to Brooks, he shifted it right to Joshua King, who arrived to deliver a superb firsttime finish with his left instep across Leno and into the far top corner of the goal.
Emery will not have been impressed with his players’ failure to track the Bournemouth runners and right back Hector Bellerin was most culpable. The Spaniard was jogging. Still, though, it was a fine goal and one that Bournemouth deserved.
The second half was even tighter than the first and for long periods there was not much in it. After Arsenal’s second goal, Howe’s brave use of substitutes helped his team mount a late charge and with the right bounce of the ball they might have taken something.
Emery’s decision to take Torreira off perhaps affected his team more than he expected. Emery said the player was tired. But when Lerma smacked a shot against the post from distance with five minutes to go, the Arsenal manager’s relief on the touchline was clear. AFC BOURNEMOUTH (4-4-2): Begovic 6; Francis 6, Cook 6, Ake 6, Daniels 6.5; Brooks 7 (Stanislas 72min, 6), Gosling 6.5 (Cook 72, 6), Lerma 5, Fraser 5.5; Wilson 7, King 7 (Mousset 80). Scorer: King 45. Booked: Lerma, Ake. Manager: Eddie Howe 6.5. ARSENAL (3-4-2-1): Leno 6.5; Mustafi 6, Sokratis 6, Holding 6; Bellerin 6, TORREIRA 7.5 (Guendouzi 78), Xhaka 7, Kolasinac 6.5; Mkhitaryan 5.5, Iwobi 6 (Ramsey 80); Aubameyang 6 (Nketiah 90). Scorers: Lerma 30 og, Aubameyang 66. Booked: Sokratis. Manager: Unai Emery 7. Referee: Craig Pawson 6. Attendance: 10,792.