I couldn’t watch the game yesterday due to family commitments and a birthday celebration for The Management, which meant watching the game on replay and benefiting from knowing the result. It has its upside, in that you feel perfectly calm watching the game unfold, knowing that Arsenal have safely progressed and done so with plenty of goals scored, but there is that element of jeopardy and ‘fear’ that is missing, which kind of sanitises the experience.

Nevertheless, I caught up with the goings on at Fratton Park yesterday, and with Arteta ringing the changes for this one, it felt as though there was a real opportunity for some of those rotational players, as well as a chance to see a returning face in Havertz. I don’t think anyone was too disappointed with the starting lineup, with perhaps a question over whether Gabriel should have started. However, given that we still have a few players out, including Hincapie and Calafiori for the game, I wasn’t surprised to see either Gabriel or Saliba. Big Gabi it was, which I think makes sense, because he’s the one who has played fewer minutes than Saliba due to his injury. I wonder if for Wednesday night’s game Saliba might come in?

But for this one, he went with our big Brazilian, and other than that, we pretty much changed the whole team, including a start for Nwaneri, which certainly had myself as well as a lot of you guys also happy that the kid would be given his chance. We’ve got a lot of minutes to be played in January, we need every member of the squad active and having had some run-outs, so I was really pleased that Ethan was able to get a start and managed to rack up a solid 70 minutes. I thought he also played well; he moved the ball around, he looked comfortable on it, if not spectacular. But the way the game kicked off, there wasn’t a lot of spectacular stuff to talk about, including an early goal for Portsmouth that put us on the back foot. That sort of stuff can always happen, I guess, because you’ve got a home crowd who are super excited to have a Premier League team back on their patch, as well as an Arsenal team that has made a lot of changes, which means cohesion is going to be an issue. And for that goal, Portsmouth scored, Kepa will probably think he might have done better with his parry, perhaps. But he was important thereafter and had a good game overall; he made four saves in total, and although he conceded, I think he can consider this a good day’s work.

The upside of an early goal is that it gives you enough time to respond (the most perfect FA Cup example of that is the Hull Cup final back in 2014), and I think the fact we responded so quickly plays a big part in the game state too. If a game like this wears on, the opposition gets more and more emboldened defensively, which turns into the deepest and most difficult of low blocks. But we were behind for just a few minutes before our old friend Own Goal stepped up to bring us level. Had the defender not got a touch, however, I think Norgaard puts it in, so although on paper this was another OG, in reality, the pressure of Norgaard did enough. And it was another set piece, for which the numbers we have racked up this season are absurd. I saw a stat from Orbinho that said something like 17 goals we’ve scored from set pieces this season. We can all talk about the striker situation at the moment, but set pieces are a massive part of this team’s success this season, and when we are up against those aforementioned low blocks, set pieces and corners are an important weapon in unlocking stubborn defences with many players in the box. So it was the case for our second goal too – the first of the Martinelli hat-trick – and we got a reminder of the fact that Martinelli is actually very good in the air. I remember when he first broke in to the team under Emery all those years ago; Martinelli scored a couple of good headed goals in Europe, I remember, and it’s what led several Arsenal fans to say that perhaps he’s a guy who could be playing centre forward in future.

Obviously, that evolution to number nine never happened, but if we are getting back the Martinelli who had his best-ever goal haul in 2022/23 with 15 goals in all comps, then I think we’ll all be more than satisfied with his output this season from the wide positions. In fact, with this hat-trick, he now has nine in all comps – well on track for his best ever season at The Arsenal. I have spoken with mates about how I wonder if that Martinelli from 2022/23 was the outlier, as opposed to the player he really is, but if he can continue to bag important goals for us between now and the end of the season, I might need to update my priors on that one.

Before his second Set-Piece Again Ole Ole goal to put us 4-1 up, there was a pretty terrible open-goal miss at the back post, but I’m not minded to bag on him too much given he’s scored a hat-trick and won the game for us. And although that final goal from the set piece was the cherry on the cake for us yesterday, for me, Martinelli’s second goal and our third on the day were the best of the lot. There was just something so smooth and silky, the way Gabriel Jesus slid the ball across the goal and in behind all the Portsmouth defenders for Martinelli to slide in at the back post. We’ve all talked amongst our WhatsApp groups, in the pub and online about the Gabby Jesus and Martinelli relationship, but this was it here on full display, and aesthetically it was the best goal of the lot.

His hat-trick goal was another testament to good set-piece delivery from our team (Madueke in particular), although I don’t think it looked like a particularly spectacularly ‘worked’ goal. Martinelli got in front of his man, flicked the ball goalwards, and the game has a gloss on it that suggests this was a little easier than it was.

Job done, into the next round, plenty of rotation completed, an eventful game (I haven’t even mentioned Noni’s penalty, which was a pretty poor effort but won through his own trickery), but it wasn’t a flawless performance. Portsmouth got off more shots on target than us, Kepa made more saves, and we didn’t control the game as much as the scoreline suggests. But it doesn’t matter. We got through, and tonight’s draw will have our names in it, as opposed to the last two seasons, so that’s good. It wasn’t vintage, free-flowing Arsenal, but we did enough.

Because I wasn’t around James and Amanda did a post-game review on the Same Old Arsenal pod yesterday, which you can watch here, if you’re that way inclined. Otherwise, I’ll be back tomorrow as we count down to the Chelsea League Cup semi-final. See you then.