Ben White isn’t one for hyperbole, so when he describes Arsenal’s spanking of Everton as “nice” you have to assume he was genuinely quite impressed by the performance.
For 40 minutes, players and punters alike looked a little twitchy as they renewed acquaintances with the visitors’ parked bus but the floodgates opened just before the break when Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli scored in the space of five minutes.
In the second half, Sean Dyche’s side barely had a kick as Martin Odegaard added a third before Gabriel Martinelli rounded things off with a deft touch at Jordan Pickford’s near post. After an annoying defeat at Goodison Park a month ago, this was swift and deserved revenge.
“It’s a nice feeling, we played them a couple of weeks ago and didn’t get the result we wanted, so today it was nice to put four past them,” White told Norwegian station Viaplay.
“Every game we want to win. Unfortunately, we didn’t against them away so it was a nice feeling to do it today.
He added: “It was always going to be a tough game, they sit deep and double-up on our wingers, so it was going to take a magic moment to score a goal. Once we done that, it was our game.”
White wasn’t the only one to praise the wizardry of Bukayo Saka; manager Mikel Arteta was also suitably impressed.
Having been marked out of the game for most of the opening stages, the England international broke the deadlock on 40 minutes when he collected an Alex Zinchenko pass, turned on a sixpence and rocketed into the roof of the net from a tight angle.
Arteta told Sky Sports: “In the end, you have to produce those magic moments and take that initiative and have that mentality, ‘I’m going to do it on the pitch. I’m not going to wait for somebody else to do it.’
“When you have a few players who have the willingness and the capacity to do that, you have a better chance to win more games.”
Saka’s opener was his 50th goal involvement in the Premier League (27 goals, 24 assists) and the sixth youngest player to reach the milestone. (Stat via Opta)
50 – Bukayo Saka has become the sixth-youngest player in Premier League history to reach 50 goals+assists in the competition, after Michael Owen, Wayne Rooney, Robbie Fowler, Cesc Fàbregas and Chris Sutton. Jewel. pic.twitter.com/JFRVnK4BX8
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) March 1, 2023
Chris Sutton sticks out like a sore thumb in that list
I didn’t realise that Jewel played football…
Paul Jewel, wasn’t he at Bradford.
Probably all 50 from his time with a very good Blackburn side I would imagine.
37 G+A for Norwich before he joined Blackburn. He was very good for a few seaons. Absolute melt of a pundit though.
There’s a staaaaaarboy,
Running down the right
His name’s Bukayo Saka
And he’s fucking dynamite!
Nice. We do need to drop the multi-player chants, especially when they’re not playing. KT and ESR must get pissed off.
Someone said they were singing this in the North Bank yesterday and I’ve not been able to get it out of my head since! Fk*n love this guy Saka
Take a BOWie, son.
You know a chant is good when you can make out the tune without any music.
Lol Ben loves an interview with Norwegian media.
He is clear, concise, and doesn’t use a lot of flowery language. He’s probably relatively easy to understand if you’re not a native speaker.
I still think there is something in his temperament that is quite (stereotypically) Nordic. I can imagine him being popular there
As a Dane, I can tell you that most of the people I talk to at games see him as having “a finnish demeanor” (That’s, I think, lovingly something akin to “quite private, doesn’t talk a lot, hilarious when he finally does, and .. likely to stab you out of nowhere”) – and I kinda agree with that assessment 🙂
As you can imagine, there’s a lot of “brotherly love” between our countries.
Yeah, expect to see him on Nordic Noir tv shows soon😊
How is Pickford still England’s first choice keeper over Rammy? What a joke.
Southgate and his favourites.
Coz Pickford plays very well for England.. why try to promote Ramsbo as England’s number 1 when he’s got a job to do with us 1st, as with Jesus the less playing time our players play for their countries the better, imagine Saka getting a long term injury in the next meaningless international games…
Because Southgate is a cxxt who has already blown our greatest opportunity for years to win a World Cup and a European championship. Against Italy we scored after 3 minutes and didn’t have another shot on target until the 98th minute. He played mason fucking mount on the left wing. In the World Cup semi final he took saka off and put Sterling on,. Hope that explains why Pickford is still englands number one.
Because Southgate drives team selection driven by cronyism. Transparently the England setup is so stale and they only get by because of the quality they have. They could play and win so much better if there was an element of initiative to their entire mindset, incl. not picking Pickford and instead having Rambo as the ball playing goalkeeper
Favouritism I imagine. Or stupid, blind loyalty? Like a toxic relationship.
The win, for me, was extra delightful because we put 4 past Ramsdale’s competition as first choice GK for England.
I also doubt White will play for England again while Southgate and Holland are still there.
I cannot believe they are still there. Such a waste of talent. As if the FA don’t recognise that Southgate is out of his depth and the glaring weak point of the entire england set up. The guy has two jobs in International management. 1) Pick the correct on form players and 2) Provide the right pre-game/in game tactics to bring the best out of the talent he has. He is good at neither.
Just watched this. Wow! Talk about fucking dominant! That second half was pure football. We wiped the floor with them. “You’re going down”! Crowd was buzzing! Believe gooners!!!!
Saka surely on for premier league player of the season?
It’ll be media darling Rashford or tap in merchant Haaland
Who gives a shit where these individual awards go, it’s a mostly subjective argument.
The only award that anyone should care about is the one you get for finishing first in the PL.