Arsenal put up a resilient second-half performance to produce one of the comfortable football scores of the weekend in the Premier League. Gabriel Martinelli opened the scoring in the 20th minute before a Martin Guehi own goal doubled their advantage in the 85th minute. Arsenal dominated the first half but Crystal Palace got their act together in the second half and looked the more threatening of the two sides.
Player ratings
Palace: Guaita (6), Clyne (7), Andersen (7), Guehi (6), Mitchell (6), Doucoure (6), Schlupp (6), Eze (5), Ayew (7), Zaha (7), Edouard (6)
Subs: Mateta (6), Milivojovic (6), Hughes (6)
Arsenal: Ramsdale (8), White (6), Saliba (8), Gabriel (8), Zinchenko (7), Partey (7), Xhaka (7), Saka (8), Odegaard (7), Martinelli (7), Jesus (8)
Subs: Tierney (7), Nketiah (6), Lokonga (6)
Man of the Match: William Saliba
Managers Reaction
Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta said: “I’m really pleased with winning, getting the three points and a clean sheet against a really difficult opponent in a tough place where they really got their people going. As we expected we were going to have tough periods during the match, but we showed great resilience to get through them. You need the right balance because if you come short in terms of physicality in this game, you’re going to be exposed.”
Crystal Palace manager Patrick Vieira to Sky Sports: “We created two really good chances to score and we didn’t take them. In this game, you get punished really hard. Of course I’m disappointed because we could have scored, even if we didn’t create much. Football is about trying to score goals and we played against a good side. It’s really difficult to control the game against teams that have really good players. We had the ball, we had situations but we didn’t create very much. In the key moments, we didn’t score to lift the crowd and build momentum. That is something we have to work on.”
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