In a week of uncanny results with Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester United all losing to relatively smaller opponents, another match was heading towards the same sort of ending when the Magpies were leading by a solitary goal against the misfiring Gunners at St. James’ Park, until Mikel Merino equalized and Gabriel grabbed the winner in the dying moments to secure full points for the visitors.
Newcastle United started in their usual 4-3-3 formation with high profile players like Joelington, Sandro Tonali, Bruno Guimaraes, Anthony Gordon all in the starting line-up. Meanwhile, Arsenal’s first eleven was boosted by the returns of Bukayo Saka and Eberechi Eze, though centre back William Saliba was not fully fit to start hence deputized by young Spaniard Cristhian Mosquera.
Also read: Gyökeres and Timber score twice as Arsenal dispatch Leeds
The visitors started in an extremely offensive mood when in the 2nd minute of the game Viktor Gyökeres created himself some space inside the goalmouth and connected with the resulting free kick. The Swede’s header would have probably ended up in the middle of the goal, but Nick Pope pulled off a superb reflex save to thwart him. Just a few minutes later Pope produced another spectacular save with his left hand when Eberechi Eze found his way to a rebound on the edge of the box and shoot to the bottom right corner.
Then in the 15th minute, Arsenal were awarded a penalty after Nick Pope fouled Gyökeres when the later was trying to sidestep the English goalie. However, after a VAR check it was found that no foul was committed. Arsenal continued to penetrate and almost opened the scoring in the 25th minute when Leandro Trossard latched onto a pass inside the box, stepped inside his marker and smacked a left footed strike against the left post. A couple of minutes later Eze was in a good shooting position just outside the box and unleashed a first-time shot towards the middle of the target after an assist from Calafiori, but the goalkeeper made a decent save.
The deadlock was finally broken in the 34th minute against the run of play when Nick Woltemade jumped highest to connect with a perfect cross from Sandro Tonali and planted his close-range header into the bottom left corner to give Newcastle a half time lead. David Raya was wrong footed and totally helpless.
Mikel Arteta withdrew Mosquera at half time and introduced Saliba to strengthen the defence. In the 55th minute, Eze received the ball in space inside the box and only had the keeper to beat, but sent his first-time shot over the bar. Right after that, Joelington came close to double their lead after collecting a pass and running with pace goal wards before unleashing a great drive from the edge of the box, but it went inches wide of the right post.
In the last quarter of the game, Mikel Arteta introduced some attacking options in the likes of Gabriel Martinelli, Mikel Merino and skipper Martin Odegaard to turn things around. Eventually, the Gunners did find an equalizer in the 84th minute when Mikel Merino met a brilliant cross from Declan Rice and scored with a bullet header from close range. He placed the ball in off the bottom of the right post and Nick Pope had no chance of stopping that.
A penalty appeal from Newcastle was denied by referee Jarred Gillett in the 86th minute after it looked like Gabriel inadvertently handled the ball inside the box. Then in the 6th minute of stoppage time, the inevitable happened when Gabriel inspired rapturous celebrations in the away end by heading in Martin Odegaard’s corner to give his side a deserving 2-1 lead.
With this victory Arsenal are now 2nd in the league table with 13 points, only 2 adrift of Liverpool after 6 round of matches, while Newcastle are languishing at 15th place, collecting only 6 points in as many games.
