Match report – Player ratings – Arteta reaction – Video
I feel like this season has generated an all-time record of me starting a blog with the question: where do I begin?
Arsenal took a step closer to the title yesterday with a 1-0 win over West Ham, but in circumstances that were – not for the first time this campaign – extraordinary, by the very literal definition of the word. Mikel Arteta picked the same team that started against Fulham, and we began very brightly.
A few weeks back, we were enjoying Dinos Mavropanos for his goal against Man City, the former Arsenal boy doing us a favour etc etc. Yesterday, he was responsible for us not going ahead. First blocking Riccardo Calafiori’s goal-bound shot after he’d been set up by a brilliant Leandro Trossard pass. Then, when the Italian flicked a header towards the net from a Declan Rice free kick, he produced a ridiculously good piece of defending, scooping the ball from behind him with his foot to prevent the goal with the keeper beaten all ends up.
At that point we’d already hit the bar, Hermansen had made one brilliant save to deny Trossard, and it looked only a matter of time before we’d score. Then Ben White got injured in a challenge, one which I thought Gary Neville on Sky unfairly and unkindly blamed the Arsenal man for when it was just one of those things that happens, and Mikel Arteta’s brain stopped working for a few minutes.
Perhaps there was a fitness issue with Cristhian Mosquera that made him eschew the obvious like for like change, but he brought Martin Zubimendi on and shifted Declan Rice to right-back. Managers will always say they can learn from their mistakes, but this was as big a misstep as we’ve seen Arteta make in a long, long time. With so much at stake, it could have become one of those that people talked about forever but, thankfully, it’s just a sidebar in today’s proceedings, but one that I hope he will recognise as one he got wrong and never repeat again.
I don’t know if you can say the wind went out of our sails, but it certainly impacted our performance. Our best midfielder was now out of action on the touchline, and the touchline that wasn’t really working that well anyway – most of Arsenal’s first half threat came down the left yesterday. Zubimendi was the wrong choice, and he struggled to get into the game on top of that.
I wondered about a half-time change, I didn’t think it was likely but Mosquera came on for Calafiori who, Arteta said afterwards, was injured. I mean, with him you can’t rule it out, but I do wonder if that was a way of saving face because he had to correct the mistake he made with the first sub. But when you lose momentum, it’s hard to get it back, and with West Ham digging in with their back five, it was hard going. We brought on Martin Odegaard and Kai Havertz for Eze and Zubi, a sub being subbed is always harsh, but needs must. There was a title on the line. If Arteta got it wrong earlier, he corrected the course and thankfully it paid off.
We had a shout for an Arsenal penalty when the ball hit a West Ham arm, but the player was on the ground, and you can’t do anything with your arms in those circumstances. Saka had a couple of pot shots, and then came a moment where I felt like my heart stopped, all the breath went out of my body, and time stood still. Out of nothing, West Ham fashioned a brilliant chance, Mateus Fernandes was through, just David Raya to beat. He took a touch then, crucially, a touch I didn’t think he needed, but with all the goal to aim for to his right, he tried to beat the Arsenal keeper at his near post. Raya flicked out his right leg, making probably the most important save of his career, and Saliba just about sliced the ball away for a corner.
I think Raya deserves massive credit (he got 10 out of 10 in the player ratings!), but I also think if an Arsenal striker had fluffed his lines like that in front of goal, we’d be calling it a bad miss rather than a brilliant save. Why not both? Sure, I can live with that, and I don’t want to take anything away from Raya, but for me it’s a bit more bad miss than great save. Which I am very, very thankful for.
Five minutes later we finally found a breakthrough. Odegaard, who had played a couple of really nice incisive passes beforehand, played a one-two with Rice, kept the ball under control in a tight area with lots of touches (all that practice made perfect folks!), before laying it off to Trossard who applied the finish. His first goal in 2026, his first goal in 25 games, it’s absurd really when you think of the quality he has, but what a time to get it. How often has he come up clutch for us? Odegaard’s endeavour and ability with the ball at his feet was crucial, I also enjoyed his reaction to the goal, falling to his knees and pumping the air in celebration.
Meanwhile Trossard and the rest were going crazy as they wheeled away. William Saliba booted a ball off its cone (oh hi Ryo!) and jumped into the away end. It felt like that goal would never come, and the combination of joy and relief was palpable. Then it was about ensuring we kept that lead, with as little drama as possible.
Arsenal: “Hold my beer. Not just a regular beer. One of those giant German ones.”
The game got intensely scrappy. A West Ham coach was sent off. Trossard and Saliba got booked. There were free kicks galore. West Ham pumped the ball towards our box again and again. Our possession fell to 35%. When it was near our box, we just booted it away. It kept coming back. I did not realise it was possible age 1000 years in a period of 6 added minutes.
But of course it was more than that. Much more. What happened with Raya will be the main focus, but I think it’s important to credit Gabriel with a huge block on a Callum Wilson shot that led to the corner from which all the rest of it went down. If that went in, there would have been nothing to save our bacon, and not for the first time the Brazilian’s ability to get in the way of opposition shots in an almost nonchalant way was key to an Arsenal clean sheet. It’s a brilliant piece of defending, as important to yesterday’s result as Raya’s save from Fernandes.
From there though, it all went mental. The corner came in with players wrestling all over the place – as is standard at every corner with every team in the Premier League these days – Saliba’s clearance was weak, it fell to Wilson who cracked the ball over the line, and I can’t lie, I nearly got sick. I think we’ve all experienced that sensation where you’ve had genuinely bad news and there’s a visceral reaction in the pit of your stomach. It was like that. Which is crazy, but that’s how it felt.
We’d blown it. How have we allowed that to happen? At that stage of the game? With so much at stake? Just lie me down in a field, and let nature take me.
Except, in the middle of all that corner mayhem, there seemed to have been a foul on the Arsenal goalkeeper. We saw a replay, then another, and it was obvious there was a foul on Raya. In fact, there were two fouls on Raya, with Pablo’s arm across his neck and his hand grabbing the Spaniard’s arm as he tried to catch the ball, and from behind Todibo pulling his shirt.
VAR checked, and kept checking. Eventually they told Chris Kavanagh to go to the monitor. I think we all generally know what that means for a decision, but I could barely let myself believe it might happen. He looked, and looked, and looked, then made his mind up.
Chris Kavanagh: “After review, West Ham number 19 commits a foul on the goalkeeper, final decision – direct free kick.”
Ian Wright on Sky Sports: “The sweetest words since ‘I have a dream’ by Martin Luther King.”
In a season which has been filled with enough drama for a lifetime, there was yet another helping, and it feels like this is one of the rare times in recent seasons when we’ve been on the right side of a moment like this. I also think it’s the right decision, and some will say ‘You would think that, you’re an Arsenal fan’, which is fair enough. However, even if we were desperate for a goal up the other end we’d scored that same goal, I couldn’t sit here and genuinely complain about it being chalked off if our players had done that to their goalkeeper. Not without being fundamentally dishonest. I could be unhappy, or sad, but not actually aggrieved.
Not one foul on Raya, two fouls on Raya. A goalkeeper who is so good at coming for those balls, and who had won those challenges multiple times in this game alone, was prevented from doing so by two West Ham players. I don’t think anyone can argue in good faith that he wasn’t fouled. If you have an objection to VAR, that’s a separate issue, but we know they forensically examine every goal for infringements. It’s not new. If you think goalkeepers get too much protection, you might have a point, but it’s one of the few instances where we get real consistency in the decisions. Arsenal had a goal ruled out a couple of seasons ago for a tiny Ben White tug on the goalkeeper, there is more than enough precedent.
Some ask why aren’t any of the other ‘fouls’ relevant? Well, it’s basically impossible for the officials to see them as anything other than six of one, half a dozen of the other. Is it a penalty or a free out? There’s too much going on, and it might well be a problem football has to solve, but this is not an Arsenal issue. Every team does it, they have done from August to now, and to frame this as something unique to us is nonsense. In this incident, it’s where the ball is, and as the goalkeeper is the only one allowed to use his hands and is obviously prevented from doing so, it sets it apart from everything else.
I get why West Ham see it differently, that goal would have been huge for them. I get why people hate the fact goals are ruled out, it’s a conversation we’ve had loads of times on this blog and in the podcasts, but this is the football world we live in. Everyone. Not just Arsenal, and anyone who tries to argue this morning that Raya wasn’t fouled or the decision was some outlier and not the natural consequence of the current officiating landscape is doing so in bad faith. In particular, goalkeepers (ex and current) who would demand that same kind of protection for themselves, then not applying that consistency of thought to this incident are showing us their analysis is essentially crooked.
The contention that Arsenal do this all the time and are just allowed to score is just untrue as well. It’s a thing people say that sounds true but doesn’t stand up to any scrutiny. Another example of the post-truth world we live in, say something enough and people will believe it, despite the fact it’s demonstrably false. Too many people who get on their high horses because they care so much about the ‘game we all love’ are more than happy to regurgitate this kind of crap, which undermines their moral high ground more than anything else.
In the end, after another three decades of injury time, the final whistle blew. Arsenal had won. Three points were ours, and we took a dramatic, heart-rendering step towards becoming champions after so many years. Nobody said it was going to be easy, but nobody said it was gonna be like this either. The old adage about how Arsenal never do the easy way has been redefined this season to a ridiculous level. I sat on the sofa, put my laptop down for a few minutes, and tried to breathe properly. My Garmin watch clocked my heart rate at 129bpm (resting 65bpm, typically).
“F*cking hell”, I said to nobody as my WhatsApp message count went through the roof. I drank some of the beer I hadn’t touched since we scored (because obviously that would have been bad luck), and let it all wash over me. Not winning yesterday would have been unthinkable, winning the way we did felt almost unbearable, but in the end the table will show the Arsenal point count increased by 3, and that was all that mattered in the end.
Two games to go, plenty still to do, and the only thing I can say is that if anyone thinks it’s gonna be plain sailing from here, you haven’t been paying attention. We have a week to prepare ourselves though, a week to find some calm, before we have to do it all again, so let’s just enjoy it this morning.
Mikel Arteta said afterwards:
I feel so happy, so proud. Relieved as well, because we knew the difficulty of the game, but we’ve done it. It’s been a phenomenal week in every sense. What the team has done, the way we’ve played, the way we have approached games. Then what our supporters have done for us this season, all week and today as well. It’s phenomenal, I think it changes the energy of the team and we have to live in the present now and just think about Burnley because that’s the only important thing.
Everything else is water under the bridge now. The water might well be made up entirely of the salty tears of non-Arsenal fans, but it is what it is. I can live with that, and I’m sure you can too.
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Right, I’m gonna leave it there for now, but you can join myself and James a bit later for what promises to be a very interesting Arsecast Extra. We’ll put out the call for questions on BlueSky @gunnerblog.bsky.social and @arseblog.com in while, so when that happens fire away using the hashtag #arsecastextra – or if you’re an Arseblog Member on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord server.
We’re recording a little later than normal, so the pod should be out mid-afternoon or thereabouts.
For now, have a good one.