Arsenal beat Manchester United as Premier League Top 4 Race Heats Up

Arsenal bounced back from their midweek loss to beat Manchester United in the Premier League at the Emirates, in a match that would make a massive difference in the top 4 race.

It was a splendid match at the Emirates on Sunday afternoon, when Manchester United took on Arsenal on the back of a thrilling victory over PSG on Tuesday. Arsenal on the other hand, suffered a defeat to Rennes on Thursday, and had a poor week overall. The Gunners are a different beast at home however, and were favourites for this match regardless of how well Manchester United were playing. Unai Emery came out all guns firing, with his 4 best players in Lacazette, Aubameyang, Ozil, and Ramsey all making highly-anticipated starts. Despite Manchester United playing the better football throughout the match and creating far better chances, Arsenal ran away 2-0 winners in a fixture that could have massive implications on the top 4 race come May.

Romelu Lukaku missed a golden opportunity to open the scoring after a pinpoint cross from Shaw was scuffed by the Belgian. The first 15 minutes of the match well and truly belonged to Arsenal though, and their dominance and confidence was reflected in Granit Xhaka’s early goal from 30-or-so yards out. The Swiss international always hits them clean, and the swerve on this strike completely fooled David De Gea, who took 2 steps in the wrong direction that he could never recover from. It was a poor goal to concede by the Spaniards expectations, but Xhaka always tends to show up in these big matches, and he did so again today throughout the 90 minutes.

After going down a goal, Manchester United turned it up a notch and truthfully controlled the rest of the match. Bernd Leno stood tall throughout however, stifling United’s final action on many occasions with his superb reading of the game. Manchester United struck the post a couple times and missed a few clear-cut chances as well. This could have been a far different result had they managed to do so.

Arsenal extended their lead after an extremely nervy 50 minutes or so, after Fred took down Lacazette in the penalty area. Aubameyang stepped up to take the penalty despite missing a crucial one against Spurs last weekend. Although he placed the shot in the exact same spot as he did against Spurs, De Gea dove the wrong way and Arsenal grabbed their 2nd. From here, United hardly looked like threatening apart from an open header for Rashford in injury time, which he subsequently placed gently into Leno’s arms to cap off an awful day in front of goal.

Lukaku, Shaw, and Dalot were superb for United in transition, but simply couldn’t find the back of the net. Despite the team performance not being the best for Arsenal, there were many stunning individual displays across the XI, most notably from Ramsey, Leno, Xhaka, Maitland-Niles, and Sokratis.

The Gunners earned a much-needed win, leapfrogging their opponents in the table and putting themselves within 1 point of Spurs. The race for top 4 has heated up further, with just 4 points separating Spurs in 3rd from Chelsea in 6th. Arsenal are the only team out of the 4 to be done with all of their top 6 clashes however, which bodes well for them in this tight race.