With one, two, three goals, Arsenal had a fine afternoon, defeating their bitter rival, Manchester United to again move into the top four until their partner in the two-horse race, Tottenham play in the evening.
Manchester United is left to reflect on missed chances, none bigger than Bruno Fernandes’ penalty miss that would have brought them to level with Arsenal when the game was at 2-1.
It was another defensive disaster class for Manchester United which has now lost further ground in the race for the top four.
It was the case of different players, same story for the visitors as they fell behind to another early goal when Raphael Varane and Alex Telles made a mess with clearance and Nuno Tavares netted his first goal for the club.
Unlike the lifeless performances against Everton and Liverpool recently, United responded well to going behind and carved out the better chances with Diogo Dalot rattling the woodwork from distance and Bruno Fernandes’ shooting boots letting him down again.
The frailties in Man United allowed Eddie Nketiah to score from a close range but VAR gave them a temporary respite to disallow the game and replace it with a penalty kick that Bukayo Saka net in coolly, sending David De Gea an9ther way.
Christiano Ronaldo reduced the deficit two minutes later but Granit Xhaka sent in a stunner, to make it three, and put Arsenal on a sound footing for the three points that helped sail Mikel Arteta into the top four.
An elated Xhaka after the match could not hide the excitement saying, I am very happy for the three points and secondly very happy to have helped the team with a goal. I haven’t scored in a long time and it’s good to do it fin front of the fans. But the most important thing was the three points.
“We started well but it was a 50-50 game in the second half. United was pressing and did much better, but we got the three points. The missed penalty helped us.
“It’s not the first time we score and concede straight away, we did it twice against Chelsea. So we have to be more clever and have a strong mentality for the five minutes after we score.”
Manchester United interim manager Ralf Rangnick believed his team showed improved performance at the start, but in the end, was a disappointing result.
“I think we bounced back well from the early goal and had numerous chances in both halves to score more goals”.
“I thought the weak part of our performance today is we didn’t defend well inside and around our box. I felt there were three very unlucky VAR decisions. For me the Arsenal third was offside. The second of Cristiano was not offside. We were not very happy with the VAR decisions today. An improved display but a disappointing result.”
He was unhappy with the missed penalty which he said, would have helped a lot and probably would have changed the whole game. IAtthe end, very unlucky for us.
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