Bukayo Saka finished Saturday wearing Arsenal\u2019s captain armband as his side moved three points clear at the top of the Premier League, yet he admitted he was not satisfied with his own performance.<\/p>\n
Arsenal were again ponderous in open play, with Saka repeatedly trying to free himself from Ryan Sessesgnon. The match\u2019s decisive moment arrived on the cusp of the hour mark when Leandro Trossard kneed a scrappy opener over the line from a corner delivered by the club\u2019s vice-captain.<\/p>\n
After the game Saka was blunt about his contribution from set pieces. \u201cWe have some big guys in the box. At the start of the game, I took some rubbish corners,\u201d Saka told Sky Sports postmatch. \u201cI was quite disappointed. I kept going, and I think this [the one that Trossard scored] is the fourth one. I put it in, and it was a nice delivery. Gabriel got the touch, and Leo got the goal, so I\u2019m very happy with that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fulham\u2019s manager Marco was especially unhappy with the manner of the goal, arguing his side had largely controlled the inside channels. \u201cWe wanted to block that strong run and power run from Gabriel most of the time. I really believe that path can\u2019t be open,\u201d the Portuguese boss moaned. \u201cMost of the game we did control well the inside path for him to run in the direction of the goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat moment Sessegnon opened out a bit more, he went in the way and you see how high that he [Gabriel] can jump. In that moment, the flick at the front post killed us a little bit on the far post with the touch from Trossard.\u201d<\/p>\n
The goal added to an ongoing trend: more than 60% of the Gunners\u2019 goals this season have come from dead-ball scenarios, a proportion unmatched by any other Premier League team. Manager Mikel Arteta played down any suggestion of dependence and connected the numbers to Arsenal\u2019s overall control. \u201cWe generate so many we have to understand [how to exploit them],\u201d Arteta explained.<\/p>\n
Victory extended Arsenal\u2019s advantage at the summit, but Saka\u2019s reaction underlined that personal standards remained high despite the result.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saka wore the armband yet felt disappointed as Arsenal edged Fulham, the goal from a corner..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3900,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,713,969],"tags":[826,1006,1019],"class_list":["post-3901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-fulham","category-premier-league","tag-bukayo-saka","tag-captaincy","tag-creative-players"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3901","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=3901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}