Happy Sunday boys and girls. We all feeling good about yet another Arsenal win?

I know I am. I must admit that on 11 minutes of the game after Gabriel had played the most hospitally of hospital balls across his side of the 18-yard box to gift Evanilson a tap in, I did not have that good feeling. Nor did I have that same feeling after Kroupi Junior had worldie-struck his shot past Raya to make it 3-2 on 76 minutes. But upon reflection there are so many positive things to take away from a game in which Arsenal managed the right moments and ultimately have done enough to find themselves seven points clear as of Sunday morning (even if not by Sunday evening, because I give managerless Chelsea zero hope of getting anything against City, unfortunately). Job done for this weekend.

Arteta kicked off the evening with his team and, perhaps unexpectedly, he engaged in a bit of rotation in attack. I certainly didn’t expect to see Martinelli and Madueke come in for Saka and Trossard, but given that this is a hectic Christmas schedule, some of these players have barely played minutes (mainly Madueke), it makes sense for there to be a little change here and there. You have to be able to trust your squad, because otherwise, what’s the point in having such an expensively assembled one (a penny of Eze’s thoughts right now)?

So rotate he did, also bringing in to Rice and I think the move to bring in Madueke clearly worked a treat. The England international really needs to invest more time in shooting drills, because he ain’t the greatest on hitting the target, but what he is possibly the best at doing in this squad is beating a man in a one-v-one duel and yesterday he had whoever he was up against on toast all night. Even before Bournemouth’s belated Christmas present from Gabriel, Madueke had beaten two men and blazed over and whilst he did that again at least once in this game, he also used his super power to help us win all three points. For our first goal he just kept driving and kept driving until he was ready to cut back and whilst eventually the ball found its way to Big Gabi for his redemption story in this game, we probably should have finished it off even before then in that move with Martinelli too. No matter though; we scored, Big Gabi neutralised his earlier error, Arsenal could start to take hold of the game and search for the win.

At least that was my assumption. Bournemouth had been on a winless run stretching back to October, they had shipped a fair few goals when you looked at the Premier League table and the ‘goals against’ column, they should leave space for us to capitalise. Except the only problem with that line of thinking is the it belies just how good they are at home and when I started to look at halftime how their home and away form stacked up, I could understand that when the halftime whistle had gone, they were the better side. Or at least they had just edged the game. They pressed high when out of possession, tried to force us in to errors and, in that first half, that’s exactly what we did. Zubi was guilty on a couple of occasions, Martinelli too, as well as Big Gabi of course. We looked like our usual rhythm was being displaced and Bournemouth were countering that with a few decent chances, shots from distance and going long on a number of occasions when they could.

The second half felt like we were able to recalibrate though and I thought we were much the better side overall. The stats will tell you Bournemouth had seven shots in the second half – the same as us – but in reality we limited them to more distance efforts and their xG in the second half was just 0.22, which tells me that they really didn’t create too much of note other than a one-in-ten effort that went in from 25-30 yards for their goal. Conversely, we were fashioning plenty of chances and I thought we were easily good value for not only the first Rice goal, but the second too.

On that first goal, let’s give some props to a few players in the build up, because Martinelli won an aerial duel that set Big Vik in, he muscled his way past four Bournemouth defenders, which also drew them on to him and allowed Odegaard to slide the ball for Rice to slot home. Odegaard will get the assist numbers, but Gyokeres and Martinelli need to have a tip of the cap for their involvement too.

On the second goal, this time the stats will favour Bukayo Saka for the assist, but it was Odegaard’s perfectly weighted ball in behind that did the first part of the damage and whilst Rice still had a bit to do to place the ball in the right place to make the goal happen, Saka gave him the perfect weight on his pass to make it as easy as possible for Declan. Declan Rice, in red and white, I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh.

And at that point, under normal circumstances, I think most Arsenal fans are happy that we’re taking all three points, were in not for that aforementioned wonder-strike. I have mixed feelings on it. Yes, perhaps Odegaard could have closed down a bit quicker, but how many of those normally beat a ‘keeper of Raya’s quality? I don’t think many at all. Then there’s the aftermath post-goal, in which Bournemouth and their fans are feeling a bit excited about an upset. But with the benefit of hindsight and a night’s sleep, I recall that Bournemouth really didn’t offer much at all from minute 77 onwards. Those Arsenal players just shut the game down and on a night in which there were one or two mistakes made early on in this match, the way these Arsenal players controlled the second half will have ultimately pleased Arteta.

We now have a solid five days between this game and the visit of Liverpool to The Emirates. That means these Arsenal players can get back to London Colney, get some training in, do some analysis ahead of what will be a really tough game, so that we’re ready for a really tough encounter against last season’s champions.

We did a post match pod on the Same Old Arsenal podcast this morning if you fancy listening in here. Other than that, I’ll catch you all tomorrow.