That wasn’t the most fun afternoon watching of football that we had yesterday, but the requirement was to get the job done and, by the time the full time whistle had gone after that silly VAR check, ultimately that was what happened. A 1-0 win against a decent Newcastle side who will most likely be in the Champions League next season is nothing to be sniffed at.

I think our first half performance could probably be sniffed at though, because it very much felt like an Arsenal side playing at half pace at times. Sloppy diags, David Raya passing to Newcastle players (and then making up for it with some fine saves), then in attack we rarely threatened Nick Pope’s goal. We did force him into a reactive save from a corner and there were a few others that were pretty much down his throat in the first half, but it wasn’t vintage Arsenal and at halftime I read a message from one of my WhatsApp groups suggesting the team were on the beach.

In the moment I agreed, but there was another longer-term issue that I had in the back of my mind: I wonder if Arteta doesn’t know how to play Eddie Howe teams. They set up in a back three, they controlled certain spaces we like to play the ball in to and whilst they did have wing backs, it felt like we had a lot of space where Saka and Martinelli normally are, yet we weren’t finding them with our passing. There were just too many touches on the ball (Partey was driving me potty in the first half in particular on that front) and the distribution across the team just seemed…well…a bit…off. I saw a stat that this was the first goal we’d scored against Newcastle with our 52nd attempt in all games we’ve played them. There’s no doubt we’ve been profligate in front of goal against the Geordies and as the halftime whistle went I definitely had that concern again. Were it not for some excellent saves from Raya, who Sky gave man-of-the-match to (I actually think it should have been Kiwior who was excellent), I think we might have been behind and that would have been a problem.

Because over the last couple of season’s when we’ve played Newcastle and gone behind, they retreat back into a compact low block and we have no answer. They are a big team and going long doesn’t normally win you many aerials against a side like that (although I did enjoy MLS out-jumping ‘Big Dan Burn’), which at times we’ve resorted to in previous games. We did do that at times yesterday and I don’t think it ever really worked. It was just a frustrating game all-in-all in that first half.

The second definitely improved. I have spent the last few days before this game talking about how we ‘out-metric’ Newcastle every time we play them, but in that first half it was them who created more chances, good chances, who had us on the ropes a little bit. But in the second half it felt like we brought it back to parity a little and, in that time, we got what was to be the eventual winner. As opposed to last season where the ‘player of the season’ awards could go to a number of Arsenal players, if you think about this season, there aren’t too many ‘stand out’ players who have had absolute stormers throughout. I thought Kai might be on course for it until his injury, Saka too would be up there were it not for his, but one player who I think surely has to be one of the top contenders is Declan Rice. He didn’t start off the season too great and so perhaps I’m suffering from some recency bias, but certainly in the last couple of months, I think he’s been absolutely fantastic. Rice’s strike on 55 minutes was a peach of a goal and deserved to win the game, but in general he was once again one of our stand out players on the pitch. It was also bloody good seeing us buy a ticket by taking a shot from outside of the box!

After that, as you’d expect, Newcastle came at us but their subs on 63 minutes – Miley, Krafth and Osula – all felt very “ok lads, let’s get a few of the first teamers off and focus on keeping people fit for next weekend against Everton” to my mind. I’d spoken to a couple of the gents around me about this game being a free hit for Newcastle now, because they know that a win against Everton at home and they’ve done their job, so those changes felt like Eddie Howe was saying “hey, if these guys come on and make a name for themselves and score then great, but otherwise, let’s just protect ourselves here”. Newcastle still threatened, they had a few half-chances and Anthony Gordon against a half-fit Ben White was a bit of a mis match, but we held on for a clean sheet and that’s Champions League sewn up.

It should probably already been second place sewn up too. We’re on 71 points and:

  • Newcastle can only get to 69
  • Chelsea can only get to 69
  • Villa can only get to 69
  • Forest can only get to 68

The only ones who can catch us are 115 Charges FC as they play Bournemouth this midweek. They are on 65 points, they can therefore get to 71 with two wins, but their goal difference is 10 worse than ours. So they need to beat Bournemouth at home and Fulham away by a couple of cricket scores just to match us. And as long as we get a point against a Southampton side that has just two wins all season, then it doesn’t matter anyway. So yeah, I’m pretty sure that we should be alright, but let’s see what happens with Bournemouth and City tomorrow evening.

Job done for the season. Thankfully. So now it’s all eyes on the club to do the necessary in the transfer market over the summer.

Catch you all tomorrow.