Goals from Iwobi, Ozil and Walcott ensured that Arsenal went on top of the Premier League table, if only for the time being.
The Gunners swept aside Mark Hughes’ Stoke city side after coming back from a goal down to win 3-1. A penalty won by Joe Allen was placed in the back of the net by Charlie Adam to give the Potters the lead right on the half-hour mark. Arsene Wenger’s side would bounce back after Theo Walcott equalised just before the end of the first half. It was the Englishman’s 100th goal for the club. Arsenal would carry on that momentum in the second half and goals from Mesut Ozil minutes after the restart, followed by Alex Iwobi would seal the result in the Gunners favour.
In his post match press conference, Arsene Wenger spoke about what difficult opponents Stoke City turned out to be. “Of course. We expected that. In the last nine games Stoke has lost one, in the last four away games they didn’t lose – including Man United. They had a convincing win at Watford.”
He went on to say that his side have been giving everything in their past few games against West Ham and Basel, so they had a ‘hesitant’ start, but eventually found themselves a goal down. He added, despite the ‘unconvincing’ penalty they conceded, they came back to win the game.
Speaking about how much his side had improved since last season, he said “Look, we were not too bad last year. We finished second in the league. I believe we have improved, yes. But we have to show that on a longer term.” The Frenchman believes that his side have created confidence and that they were ambitious, but they have to keep the levels of urgency, humility and togetherness high in every single game that follows.
This victory sees Arsenal go above league leaders Chelsea on top of the table, and Wenger said that it felt good, but insisted on waiting till tomorrow after Chelsea faced West Brom. “It’s good. But let’s wait until tomorrow. At the minute there is no difference anyway with the other teams, there is Leicester v Man City, there is Chelsea v West Brom tomorrow.”
Manchester City have succumbed to a 4-2 thumping at the hands of the reigning Champions and that means Arsenal will stay on top or go second place and it all depends on Chelsea’s result. The 67-year-old went on to add “But we are in there. No matter what the results will be. So that’s good – we are in the fight.”
