Say We Are Top Of The League

Match Review: Aston Villa 0 Arsenal 2 - Premier League 13.12.15

Arsenal kept up the momentum from their win over Olympiakos, as a dominant first half performance was enough to down Aston Villa. Although our performance dropped off in the second half, Villa rarely threatened and it was a pretty comfortable afternoon for the Gunners and leaves us top for at least a day.

Both the starting eleven and the bench remained unchanged from the trip to Greece, with Theo Walcott fit enough to start again and trusted down the left over Chamberlain. Walcott’s pace immediately caused a problem as Flamini fed the ball in behind and the forward raced in front of Hutton after an excellent first touch. Alan Hutton is one of the less talented right backs in the league and unsurprisingly, he dragged Walcott down and conceded a penalty. With seven minutes on the clock, Giroud stepped up and sent the keeper the wrong way.

The early goal was a huge bonus for us. The last thing we needed was to be pushing for the win late on with tired legs. It also meant Villa couldn’t sit back and it was because of that that we picked up our second. Ramsey won the ball in his own half and the attack sprung into life, with Özil laying off to Walcott and Walcott returning the ball to Özil from the halfway line. Villa were all over the place at the back and Mesut had a simple task to square for Ramsey to convert. A two-nil scoreline at half time was certainly fair reward for our dominant display.

After our midweek exploits, it was unsurprising that the second half was a little more sedate. Villa were a little more spirited and threatened a bit more, but never really made Cech work. Sometimes it’s nice to have a boring game like this one, one where there’s nothing more to talk about other than we put in a good shift and took away a simple three points. With the league throwing up more and more surprises, such as Bournemouth beating United, these types of wins are even more important. We need to keep winning against Sunderland at home and Villa away, because consistency is what will win the title this year.

It’s also going to be a case of who can fight through the injuries best. City and United, along with Arsenal have had a lot of injury troubles, while Leicester have had very few. I don’t for a second consider Leicester title contenders, it will be interesting to see if they can sustain their current form when key players are missing. United have been hit very hard by injuries and they’ve struggled because of it, likewise City. I think we can be encouraged by the way our stand-ins are performing, Campbell and Flamini are both doing a decent job of covering for much better players, while Ramsey is more than capable of making up for Cazorla’s absence. The point is that we need to keep ticking over until we get back to full strength and at the moment we’re doing a good job of that. When we start getting players back in the New Year, we should be in a strong position to push for the title.

Teams

Aston Villa (4-5-1)
Guzan, Hutton, Okore, Lescott, Bacuna, Veretout, Sánchez, Gueye (Grealish 78’), Sinclair (Traoré 87’), Gestede (Gil 57’), J Ayew
Subs
Clark, Westwood, Traore, Gil, Bunn, Lyden, Grealish

Arsenal (4-2-3-1)
Cech, Bellerin, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Monreal, Flamini, Ramsey, Walcott (Chamberlain 64’), Özil (Chambers 86’), Campbell (Gibbs 64’), Giroud
Subs
Ospina, Debuchy, Gibbs, Chambers, Gabriel, Iwobi, Chamberlain

Player Ratings

Cech - 7/10 - Didn’t have much to do at all
Bellerin - 7/10 - A better performance after a few struggles recently
Mertesacker - 7/10 - Very solid, no trouble at all
Koscielny - 7/10 - Ditto
Monreal - 7/10 - A full house of comfortable days for the defence
Flamini - 7/10 - Calm and collected, no sign of scary headless Flamini
Ramsey - 8/10 - Looks happy back in the middle and hungry for goals too
Walcott - 8/10 - Vital to both the goals, had a very good day
Özil - 7/10 - For me, he was nowhere near his best and still made a telling contribution
Campbell - 7/10 - Finding his feet in the team, although might be dropped for Alexis soon
Giroud - 7/10 - Composed to convert the penalty and his link up play was good
Subs
Chamberlain - 7/10 - The end product is still lacking badly, despite some promise
Gibbs - 7/10 - Doing a fairly good job as something of a utility man now
Chambers - N/A

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