Arsenal 1 Burnley 0
Arsenal so close to greatness. At this point as I’ve said over the last few games the result is the only thing that matters for Arsenal right now and they come away with yet another huge win on their way to most likely win the Premier League title, they played quite well in the first half without creating a plethora of chances against a pretty organised Burnley defence that held Man City to just one goal a couple of weeks ago at Turf Moor. The goal did eventually come for Arsenal from the old reliable set-piece this time a Saka in swinging corner which was met brilliantly by Kai Havertz with the Burnley goalkeeper in no-mans-land putting the Gunners in front in the 37th minute, Burnley did have a few break-aways but the lack of quality was apparent throughout the game and ultimately showed why Burnley are heading to the Championship next season. There was a contentious moment in the 67th minute as Kai Havertz went very high with a challenge on Ugochukwu but the referee and VAR only deemed the challenge to be sufficient enough for a yellow, I’ll talk about it later but I’m 99% sure that most people would agree that it was probably worthy of a red. Regardless Arsenal weren’t really threatened by Burnley on the night and did enough to see out the 1-goal lead which could see them champions by this time tomorrow, exciting times for Arsenal fans.
An Arsenal performance which shows how far they’ve come as a team. You might be reading this and thinking, “ but it’s Burnley at home,” and I would raise a very similar situation in the 22/23 season when Arsenal faced Southampton at home in the title race against Man City, the game finished 3-3 with Arsenal pulling two late goals back to draw the game but that draw all but finished Arsenal’s hope of a title against an already relegated Southampton side at the Emirates. You could make the argument that that Southampton side were better than this Burnley team but the point still stands that in a highly pressurized match Arsenal didn’t really have much to be concerned about defensively, Arteta already knew this starting a very attacking midfield of Odegaard-Rice-Eze which looked good in the first half but did offer Burnley chances on the break that other teams would have punished but I doubt we see that midfield again this season against Palace or PSG. There’s not really much else to say about this Arsenal performance to be honest, we’ve seen it plenty of times throughout this season and its proven to be very effective, all eyes now turn to Bournemouth vs Man City tomorrow night.
I’m sick of Burnley in the Premier League. I don’t want to sound harsh but ever since Sean Dyche has left Burnley I feel like there’s really no point of them even coming up, they had the best defence in English league history last season conceding 16 goals in 46 Championship games but just didn’t invest anywhere near enough money to even have a chance of staying in the Premier League this time. When you look at the teams that came up with them in Leeds and Sunderland you can get a clear understanding of what the recruitment teams where going for, at Leeds they went with physical players like Bijol, Calvert-Lewin, Okafor, Nmecha, Stach etc who can cope with the physical nature of the Premier League week in week out. At Sunderland they went with the gung-ho approach of nearly changing their whole team with signings like, Xhaka, Roefs, Diarra, Mukiele, Brobbey, Alderete etc who have all came in and made a huge impact at Sunderland even pushing for Europe. Then you come to Burnley who signed, Kyle Walker, Broja, Tuanzebe, Hartman, Tchaouna etc and you wonder what Burnley were going for in the summer, it obviously hasn’t worked and you wonder if where Burnley go from here with this constant yo-yoing between leagues most likely coming to an end next season.
Why didn’t Kai Havertz get sent off? I honestly can’t for the life of me see why Kai Havertz wasn’t shown a red card for the challenge on Ugochukwu which upon rewatch is just as bad as when I saw it the first time, I don’t like pointing the finger at the referee but he’s literally right in front of it so I don’t understand how he can’t see how that’s a red card. Then you go to the VAR who has the advantage of being able to watch the tackle a thousand times yet sticks with the referee’s on-field decision of yellow card, it would have had a huge impact on the game with the incident taking place in the 67th minute and would have left Arsenal down to 10-men for almost 30 minutes had he seen red. There’s been multiple apologies by the PGMOL involving Arsenal games this season whether that’s to Newcastle, Everton, Brighton and now probably Burnley, I suppose you need a bit of luck when you’re fighting for the title.
Will the title race go down to the final day? By this time tomorrow I think Arsenal will be crowned Premier League champions as I just don’t see City going to a Bournemouth team that hasn’t been beaten in the Premier League since the 3rd of January, saying that if City do win tomorrow then Arsenal will have to beat Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park on the final day given City beat Aston Villa at the Etihad as City would have the superior goal-difference. I wouldn’t want to be going to Selhurst Park knowing we needed a win even if Palace have the Conference League final a few days later as it’s always been a nasty ground to go to no matter the circumstances, all City can do is win tomorrow and hope that Arsenal slip up against Palace on Sunday. Will Arsenal be crowned Premier League champions tommorow? We won’t have to wait long to find out.