From the same move, Lewis-Skelly turned and then broke the lines with a vertical pass into Riccardo Calafiori.<\/p>\n
Then, after a great 1-2 with Leandro Trossard, the Italian strode into the box for one of our best goalscoring opportunities.<\/p>\n Always wanting to get on the ball, Lewis-Skelly calmly knitted our football together from the base of our engine room.<\/p>\n Displaying the courage to play the ball between opposing players, this pass map highlights how well he moved it forward during the first half of this high-pressure clash.<\/p>\n We missed this type of incisive distribution after he was moved to left back in the second period.<\/p>\n MLS first-half chalkboard<\/strong><\/p>\n Our free-flowing play came to a halt when Ben White was forced to leave the pitch through injury.<\/p>\n At the outset Declan Rice was asked to play at right back, with substitute Martin Zubimendi coming into midfield in his place, but the balance of the team did not feel right.<\/p>\n In the final 15 minutes of the first half, we subsequently lost our initiative.<\/p>\n Having led the shot count 9-0 after 28 minutes, we went in at the break with a 10-3 advantage in that department instead, signalling a change.<\/p>\n To his enormous credit, the manager went on to make two more decisive changes that impacted the side in a positive way.<\/p>\n Cristhian Mosquera came on at half-time, allowing Rice to return to the engine room, in a switch that saw Lewis-Skelly move to left back.<\/p>\n While we wrestled back control, the tempo of our football did slow down too much to stretch the Hammers, so Arteta then made the extremely difficult decision to replace his earlier sub Zubimendi on 67 minutes.<\/p>\n As part of a double change, Martin Odegaard entered the fray, and from that moment on, we rediscovered our mojo.<\/p>\n Martin Odegaard\u2019s cameo appearance off the bench was outstanding. <\/p>\n Bright and busy, the Norwegian performed with positive intent right from the get-go, in a right-sided No.8 role.<\/p>\n He could have made a safe, square pass to Rice here (red arrow) but instead chose the bolder pass, sliding a great ball in behind for Kai Havertz to create a half-chance.<\/p>\n Keen to get fellow sub Noni Madueke on the charge, he also produced this instant forward pass to release the winger beyond his marker.<\/p>\n These two pieces of distribution set the tone for teammates as we searched for that elusive breakthrough goal.<\/p>\n Those involvements were a precursor for his most pivotal moment, assisting Leandro Trossard\u2019s wonderful winning goal.<\/p>\n Holding onto the ball with patience, our captain suddenly injected pace into our attack by playing a clever, purposeful 1-2 with Rice.<\/p>\n Ignoring Rice\u2019s plea for a return pass outside the box, Odegaard calmly held onto the ball long enough to draw a defender towards him, before setting Trossard with the perfect weight of pass, allowing our \u2018clutch player\u2019 to take his shot first time.<\/p>\n Put simply, the clinical Belgian was in a better position to score than Rice, so Odegaard\u2019s decision-making at that key juncture was top class.<\/p>\n We were very right-side centric in this match, especially from half-time onwards.<\/p>\n Turning to Bukayo Saka for inspiration will have played a part, as did Odegaard\u2019s desire to operate in that portion of the pitch too.<\/p>\n It should also be noted that by ensuring a lot of the football took place on the opposite side to West Ham danger man Jarrod Bowen, we also limited his involvements.<\/p>\n Touching the ball just 31 times, Bowen had the second-lowest number of involvements of all the home starters.<\/p>\n This was a welcome by-product of our tendency to lean that way, with the England international very much on the periphery.<\/p>\n During the opening 45 minutes, a healthy 40.8% of our attacks stemmed from the right, but this increased to over 51% in the second half.<\/p>\n With Bowen quiet, and the winning goal originating from the right flank, this policy was vindicated.<\/p>\n For the third successive campaign, David Raya has won the Premier League\u2019s Golden Glove, claiming this year\u2019s prize with an 18th clean sheet of 2025\/26.<\/p>\n This shutout was well-earned, as he made two cracking saves to keep West Ham at bay.<\/p>\n The first, from a brilliant Taty Castellanos diving header, had him at full stretch.<\/p>\n Later on, while the score was still 0-0, Raya made a near miraculous stop with his right leg to deny Matheus Fernandes what seemed a certain opening goal. <\/p>\n With Rice covering Jarrod Bowen\u2019s run from a long ball, and our twin attacking midfielders reacting a little slowly to William Saliba\u2019s knockdown, Fernandes latched onto a loose ball.<\/p>\n From there he danced into the penalty area via a slick 1-2, but with the goal at his mercy our sensational Spanish stopper made himself a formidable barrier.<\/p>\n If we go on to win this year\u2019s title, this save might well be considered an iconic moment.<\/p>\n What a season our goalkeeper is enjoying!<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We were made to wait, but in the end, Leandro Trossard’s goal seven minutes from time was enough to give us all three points against West Ham United. The Belgian’s … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A TACTICAL MERRY-GO-ROUND<\/h2>\n
HOW THE SKIPPER STEPPED UP<\/h2>\n
TAKING BOWEN OUT OF THE GAME<\/h2>\n
A GOLDEN GLOVE WINNING DISPLAY<\/h2>\n