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MOTD: Arsenal 2-1 Everton

By on October 24, 2015

Arsenal switched tactics for their midweek battle with Bayern Munich and impressively delivered a 2-0 win from two goals on the break, salvaging their knockout round aspirations in the Champions League. In their third match this week, the team returned to their easy-on-the-eye, possession-based football to beat Everton 2-1 at The Emirates. Mesut Ozil encapsulated the side’s effort on the day, delivering a peach of a cross to assist Olivier Giroud’s opening goal.

“If you love watching football, you love watching Ozil,” Arsene Wenger proclaimed after the match, per Arsenal’s official website.

Why is Ozil so good? “It is a combination of quality of the touch, intelligence and team attitude,” Wenger said. “He is a real team player…He puts his talent at the service of the team and he wants to help the team with everything he does. That makes him efficient.”

Arsenal extended their streak of twenty-two unbeaten home matches against Everton as they managed to hold onto a 2-0 lead from two rapid-fire first-half headers not two minutes apart. The win takes them top of the Premier League table, pending the outcome of tomorrow’s Manchester Derby.

Perhaps the opening ten seconds were a sign of the end-to-end match to come as Ross Barkley immediately took a heavy touch right into Sanchez, who in turn gave the ball right back to the visitors with an odd back-heel flick.

Arsenal controlled the opening half hour, with their taxing win over Bayern just four days removed, they could’t maintain a high tempo and used long spells of possession in Everton’s half almost as respite from their frequent spurts of high energy. Olivier Giroud rose up to meet a dangerous near-post corner early, but couldn’t get clean contact on the ball.

Alexis Sanchez was once again lively, unfazed by starting in his third match in a week and seventh in the space of thirty-one days. In the thirty-third minute, he found the overlapping run of Nacho Monreal down the left with an incisive through ball and sliced a volley wide from the rebound of Monreal’s low cross.

Everton would have been relatively happy with the trajectory of the game, only for Arsenal to rapidly turn things around in the thirty-sixth minute. Giroud flicked Ozil’s cross over Howard at the near post, the Frenchman’s fourth goal in his last five appearances in all competitions. The assist also took Ozil top of the Premier League charts.

Arsenal won a free-kick on the left right from the restart. Santi Cazorla whipped a beautiful cross into the mixer and Laurent Koscielny rose up to head it home. Giroud admitted that he thought the contest was over then and there. How wrong he was.

On the brink of the half, Barkley sent a wickedly deflected effort looping over Cech into the back of the net to give Everton something to hold onto going into the break. “At 2-1 we became a bit edgy. We gave a lot on Tuesday night against Bayern Munich and I thought it showed in the last 20 minutes,” said Wenger.

The goal blew open the second half and Seamus Coleman tested Cech from long range before Ozil’s stinging twenty-five yard effort was saved by Howard. In the sixty-seventh minute, Barkley curled a low effort straight at Cech from the edge of the area and Giroud sent a similar effort onto the crossbar down at the other end at the end of Ozil’s pass.

The last time Everton beat Arsenal away was on a cold, damp January night at Highbury in 1996 and Brendan Galloway was yet to be born. Nineteen years later, the Zimbabwe-born Englishman struggled to contain Arsenal’s wide men streak in his first appearance in the fixture. His match was riddled with slips and miscues and the full-back headed a golden chance on the end of a James McCarthy’s peach of a cross at the far post.

The chaos continued as Lukaku rose up to send a towering header skimming off the crossbar and Arsenal’s introduction of Mathieu Flamini did little to solve their defensive woes. He found himself up front on multiple occasions, first curling a twenty-yard effort wide of the post before sending an unmarked header from six yards straight at Asmir Begovic. Yet on the latter occasion he was caught out on the break and just seventeen seconds later, Gerard Deulofeu forced Petr Cech into a quick reaction save off his line at the other end of the pitch.

In stoppage time, Ozil curled a beautiful effort wide off the base of the post following a one-two with Giroud and the game climaxed with Gareth Barry earning himself a second yellow card for a late tackle on Kieran Gibbs. Everton’s frustration was palpable and their woes were only compounded as Phil Jageilka hobbled off with a knee injury.

Homepage photo credit: Ronnie Macdonald, via Flickr

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.