Arsenal edged a tense 1-0 victory over Burnley at the Emirates, a result that felt familiar in scoreline and closing-stage anxiety but carried fresh significance on the title run-in. Victory moved Arsenal five points clear of Manchester City, who must beat Bournemouth on Tuesday to take the title race to the final day.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will be relaxed,\u201d Martin \u00d8degaard warned in his prematch program notes. \u201cBut tonight, it\u2019s all about us.\u201d The comment set the tone for a crowd that spent hours building intensity outside the ground and then maintained a wide-eyed mania throughout the match.<\/p>\n
An unremarkable opening half gained momentum from a set piece. After two short corners from the same side, Bukayo Saka delivered an in-swinging cross in the 37th minute and Kai Havertz rose highest to head home. It was a straightforward finish and another example of Arsenal\u2019s set-piece potency: it was the 19th different Premier League game in which Arsenal have scored from a set piece, matching the competition record, per Opta.<\/p>\n
Mikel Arteta and set-piece coach Nicolas Jover again swapped positions at the edge of the technical area before dead balls, a small ritual that prefaced the decisive moment.<\/p>\n
Player ratings (selected):
\nGK: David Raya\u20147.0: As much of a spectator as the 60,000 stuffed into the stands.
\nRB: Cristhian Mosquera\u20146.7: Spent precious little time defending.
\nCB: William Saliba\u20147.1: Breezed around the pitch with a sense of lofty authority.
\nLB: Riccardo Calafiori\u20147.0: Roamed widely.
\nDM: Declan Rice\u20147.9: The only source of ballast in Arsenal\u2019s airy midfield.
\nCM: Martin \u00d8degaard\u20146.8: Flitted around the final third.
\nRW: Bukayo Saka\u20148.0: Tormented Lucas Pires.
\nST: Kai Havertz\u20147.9: Brilliant leap to break the deadlock.
\nLW: Leandro Trossard\u20147.4: Found a way beyond Kyle Walker.<\/p>\n
Subs included Piero Hincapi\u00e9 (72\u2019 for Calafiori) 6.3, Myles Lewis-Skelly (73\u2019 for Eze) 6.2 and Viktor Gy\u00f6keres (73\u2019 for Havertz) 6.3. Zubimendi and Gabriel Martinelli appeared late.<\/p>\n
Key statistics: possession 61% to 39%, xG 1.03 to 0.21, total shots 13 to 5, shots on target 3 to 0, pass accuracy 86% to 78%, fouls 7 to 16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arsenal edged Burnley 1-0 as Kai Havertz headed from a Bukayo Saka corner and held top spot. tonight<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13896,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1381,172],"tags":[1162,1637,826],"class_list":["post-13897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-arsenal-match-reports","category-epl","tag-analytics","tag-assists","tag-bukayo-saka"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}