Arsenal extended their winning streak to seven matches in all the competitions with Rob Holding starting on Saturday with a 2-0 victory over Watford at the Emirates Stadium and finally found their place in this season’s Premier League Top 5.
Speaking after the game Rob Holding took to the moment to appreciate the new boss, Unai Emery and praise him for bringing the winning mentality back to the team. The player was recently quoted saying :
‘He said when he came in that he wanted to bring a winning mentality and I think you get that from wins and you go into each game confident.’
‘We’re physically fit and we know that we can go and get the result. It was a really competitive and physical game and we knew that coming in.
‘We just had to stand up to the battle and late on I think they tired and we managed to get a few passes together and score the goals.’
The new boss who started the season with two back to back losses against Manchester City and Chelsea, now finally seems to have found his place at Arsenal with his team performing magnificently since then, currently putting them on joint points with Tottenham in fourth place.
Javi Gracia saw his team create enough chances to win the game, most notably when captain Troy Deeney forced a fine save out of substitute goalkeeper Bernd Leno and Isaac Success clipped the post moments after coming off the bench.
The match against Watford remained goalless till the 81st minute, when Craig Cathcart diverted the ball into his own net after getting on the end of Alex Iwobi’s cross, and just two minutes later, Ozil doubled Arsenal’s lead while securing their win with Rob Holding starting his first match of the campaign.
Admittedly, although the team hasn’t played exceptionally well in any of the games till now, largely depending a lot on luck rather than taking or creating chances and pacing in torrents, they still are winning games, which is what matters. Watford, who came to North London defending an unbeaten away league record, would have very well left with the same, had it not been for some excellent goalkeeping on Arsenal’s side.
While we all understand what a huge task it can be following in the footsteps of Arsenal’s longest serving manager, Unai Emery has done his best to bring back the club’s legacy so far. While it might take the new boss some more time to implement his style of play with perfection, it’s still nice to see the team slowly come back up on their feet and win matches even when they aren’t in their best form and like Rob Holding said, bringing a winning mentality to the team.
This not only gives a brighter hope for the future, as we wait to see the classic Arsenal passing back in action and winning in style but also shows that Arsenal, even when not in their best of forms can rock the PL table when they get to it.
