Arsenal take top-four fight to wire with Stoke romp
It was a kind of aerial onslaught, albeit not the type that Arsène Wenger knows well from his many visits to Stoke City – instead this time it was the sort that cruised at around 500 feet in the Staffordshire sky and was trailing a banner hostile to the Arsenal manager.
The message in question was “Wenger – out means out!!”, a Brexit-flavoured protest which the Arsenal manager suggested he had not noticed from his seat in the dugout where he watched his team’s third successive victory since the North London derby defeat. It moved Arsenal to within one point of fourth place behind Liverpool, who face West Ham away today, and both teams with two left to play.
Could Wenger do it? After this season of unprecedented strife, even by his standards, the Arsenal manager is just one Liverpool slip-up away from being able to steer his team into that fourth-place spot, and salvage a Champions League qualifying place. He has an FA Cup final to look forward to at the end of the month and suddenly, in classic Wenger fashion, the world is considerably rosier viewed from a fresh angle.
Only once did Wenger’s mood cloud over in the post-match press conference when he was asked about the reports in French sports newspaper
L’Equipe that he has agreed a one-year contract extension. “There is no information about that,” he said, “Nothing.” Otherwise the Arsenal manager was in a playful mood when it came to the latest protest movement against him from disgruntled Arsenal fans who would rather he did not stay.
Asked about a fans’ protest he said, “When you say fans, who do you mean?”
When it was suggested to him that it was the fans with the pilot licences, he fired back: “The rich ones!” This is Wenger on his strong footing, deflating the pressure with a joke and then switching to a serious mode to gently close down the dissent.
“Look, I am paid to do my job for the club I love and I will do that as long as I’m here with full commitment. I’m not influenced by that at all, all I do is give my best. We have 69 points today so let’s make 72 on Tuesday [against Sunderland] and after that I will give my best for as long as I’m here for the values of this club and for the club.
“I want to focus on football and the rest is less important. I’m not in politics. I’m in sport, I love sport and give 24 hours a day for what I love. I am in a public job, some agree with me, some not.”
He said that the thigh injury to Alexis Sánchez, scorer of Arsenal’s third goal and a key player again, was not serious and that the player himself requested to be substituted. There were two more goals for Olivier Giroud and another from Mesut Özil, all of them ruthlessly taken, and the promise of many more against Sunderland.
At this rate it could well go down to the last day, when Arsenal have to visit Everton while Liverpool play Middlesbrough at home, and then it will be a case of who holds their nerve. While Everton fans would presumably like nothing more than to see Arsenal steal their neighbour’s Champions League place, the same could not be said of their manager Ronald Koeman who had a very public enmity with Wenger.
As for Stoke, this was another worrying afternoon for Mark Hughes, whose team have only beaten Middlesbrough and Hull since the start of March and have won one of their last 10. They were briefly thrust back into the game when the evergreen Peter Crouch came on as a substitute after 61 minutes and deflected in Marko Arnautovic’s cross with what looked like his hand.
Wenger was so convinced that the goal should have been disallowed that he refused to accept its legitimacy and instead claimed that his team had kept a clean sheet. “I was suspicious of the noise of the ball,” Wenger said. “I got to the fourth official after it had been con- firmed. I was surprised he [Crouch] got to the ball when I saw his position, then people told me it was handball.”
As for Hughes, his team were so lifted by the presence of Crouch he said that he regretted not going for the more direct approach from the start.
“With hindsight we should have started that way, to be perfectly honest,” he said. “The crowd was with us then, a great atmosphere and Arsenal rocking.
“It has been a theme this year when we have chased games against the big sides we have left ourselves too open going the other way.”
Crouch was more the kind of aerial onslaught that Wenger is used to at Stoke but his side’s response was impressive. They had scored the first before half-time when the Stoke striker Mame Diouf failed to hold the ball up and from there it went to Francis Coquelin and wide to Hector Bellerín, who crossed for Giroud to roll the ball in.
Özil scored his team’s second five minutes after half-time when Sánchez had an age to look up and take his time while his team-mate ran into the right channel of the area and was given the ball straight into his feet to chip over Jack Butland. Stoke were flatlining at that point and were transformed by Crouch’s arrival, and after four successive corners they got the breakthrough.
Then Sánchez was played in down the right channel by Bellerín and struck a right foot shot through Ryan Shawcross’s legs and beyond Butland’s right hand. Sanchez’s replacement, Aaron Ramsey, provided the cross from the right for Giroud to score his second.
“I will be a West Ham fan [on Sunday],” Wenger said. “One of the qualities of the Premier League, which you have seen in this match, is that historically there is pride in every team to give their best until the end of the season.” He did not sound like a man who was on his way out. Rather he sounded like one who thinks he might just be in the Champions League again next season.