Arsenal combine champions’ swagger with fresh fervour in ominous opener
Arsenal’s title rivals will spend a billion pounds before the end of the month, but they can’t buy the hard-earned swagger of champions.
Mikel Arteta’s men kicked off the Premier League season with a 3-0 victory that showcased the breeziness that comes with ending a long title drought featuring too many near misses along the way.
Yes, it was Coventry. Of whom nothing was expected at the Emirates beyond the enthusiasm expected of a side playing their first Premier League game in 25 years.
Frank Lampard’s side were not short of that. But, inevitably, it was the only facet of Arsenal’s play they could match.
We all feared for Coventry with only a quarter of the game played. By then, they were two goals down and at long odds to avoid the thumping they must have dreaded.
Almost affronted at Coventry’s cheek to win a corner after 18 seconds, Arsenal immediately pulled rank. Declan Rice, Martin Odegaard and Bukayo Saka bossed many games last season but, without the burden of a bottlers tag, they strutted through the Sky Blues almost at will.
Some Gunners, though, still have it to prove.
Christian Tzolis was the only one of their three big buys so far in Arteta’s selection – Ezri Konsa was paraded before kick-off while Bruno Guimaraes is carrying a knock – and the Greek winger offered the intent expected of a new boy keen to deter Arsenal from spending big on another winger before the deadline.
Tzolis’s mission on his Premier League debut was to make Milan van Ewijk’s a misery, the Coventry right-back taught harsh lessons in the first quarter.
Arsenal’s opener came after van Ewijk lost possession almost level with his own box, shunning a simple set back to Bobby Thomas, instead booting the ball at Tzolis’s studs.
Riccardo Califiori, building on an even faster start against Manchester City in the Community Shield, sparked van Ewijk’s panic by ganging up with Tzolis to take the loose ball. The marauding left-back picked out Kai Havertz, whose typically-insouciant finish made the Gunners feel even more at ease.
Van Ewijk was isolated again by the Sky Sports’ pundits for Arsenal’s second on 23 minutes. So too, very harshly, was Carl Rushworth after his attempt to cut out Tzolis’s low cross only fed Saka to finish.
Rushworth, though, was culpable when Arsenal scored their third shortly after the break.
Ben White, Saka and Odegaard cut through Coventry on the right before the Arsenal captain horribly fluffed his finish. Rushworth, all tangled up, got a glove on the almost-apologetic effort but there seemed to be no hand inside it.
With more than 40 minutes remaining, again, the fear for Coventry was that this would become a hiding enough to knock the zest out of them ahead of the real start to their season: at home to Hull next week.
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Mercifully, Arsenal spared them. Arteta took off Rice and Saka with half an hour to go, something he can do more often this term. With Rice especially following the arrival of Guimaraes and the timely return of some sanity around Miles Lewis-Skelly.
Barely 10 days ago, the academy graduate represented the sweetest, purest profit Arsenal could imagine. Since then, in three games of varying significance, Lewis-Skelly’s performances at the base of midfield highlighted the folly of the Gunners’ thinking.
At various points in their title defence, Arsenal will need the greenness and eagerness of Lewis-Skelly, Tzolis, Guimaraes and Konsa to complement the bravado of the proven champions around them.
That combination along with so much uncertainty around every one of their title rivals gives the Gunners a glorious shot of going back-to-back for the first time since 1935.