Newcastle 0 Arsenal 2
Around 10 minutes of normal time remained when the outstanding Martin Ødegaard and the almost equally impressive Gabriel Martinelli were withdrawn.
Mikel Arteta evidently judged Arsenal’s 2-0 lead sufficiently secure to protect his team’s two principal game-changers here, resting their legs for the three vital games ahead.
Manchester City may be a point ahead at the top of the Premier League table with a game in hand but Arteta’s side are not about to surrender their title challenge just yet – and certainly not after coming through a significant test of character and courage on Tyneside with flying colours.
Eddie Howe’s Newcastle pushed Arsenal all the way, doing sufficient to suggest that, providing they withstand Liverpool’s late race for qualification, they will grace next season’s Champions League. It spoke volumes that Aaron Ramsdale needed to excel – and Arteta’s players to resort to the sort of time wasting tactics the Spaniard had once accused Newcastle of.
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Howe is not a man given to hyperbole so when he recently, and readily, compared Alexander Isak to Thierry Henry it was easy to appreciate precisely how highly he rates the Sweden striker.
Isak started on the left of Newcastle’s front three here, creating room for Callum Wilson, the scorer of eight goals in April alone, to begin at centre-forward. Jacob Murphy, the right-sided component of that attacking trident, has not been playing too shabbily either of late and he very nearly scored after collecting Joe Willock’s cross in the second minute.
No matter that Murphy’s left foot cross cannoned off the base of a post, Arsenal were already up against it and struggling to withstand the sheer intensity of Newcastle’s pressing.
Howe’s players thought they should have been awarded a penalty when Bruno Guimarães’s shot struck Jakub Kiwior’s hand but, although, Chris Kavanagh, the referee, initially awarded that spot-kick he changed his mind after viewing his pitchside monitor.
Replays indicated that it was the correct decision, the ball having struck the top of Kiwior’s knee before rebounding on to the Poland defender’s hand, but the normally measured Howe was so incensed his assistant Jason Tindall felt it necessary to extend a restraining arm and prevent Newcastle’s manager confronting Anthony Taylor, the fourth official.
Howe’s mood darkened as Arsenal scored with their first attack. If there had seemed little danger when Jorginho’s pass picked Ødegaard out, everything changed as the Norway midfielder took a steadying touch before sending a 25-yard, left foot shot whizzing low through a forest of ankles before bisecting the eye of the needle gap between Nick Pope and his left-hand post. As good a finish as it undeniably was, Pope was rightly furious with his team-mates’ uncharacteristically slapdash marking.
Ødegaard’s 15th goal of a highly productive season served to remind Arsenal why they are still in the title race and, from then on, Arteta’s team menaced almost every time they entered Newcastle’s half. Pope was required to save smartly from Ødegaard again, Bukayo Saka and Martinelli during the first half alone.
Not that the visitors could remotely relax in the course of a ferociously high-tempo, yet consistently high-calibre opening half. Ramsdale, competing with Pope for second place behind Jordan Pickford in the England pecking order, saved well from Willock and Wilson.
If Howe had reason to be worried by Arsenal’s ability to breach his team’s high defensive line, the manner in which Isak repeatedly treated Ben White to his wonderfully elegant, elusive, gazelle on casters impression offered him cause for cautious optimism only tempered by his lack of service.
As exhilaratingly as Joelinton, Guimarães and Willock were, the latter anxious to impress against his former employers, rampaging forward from midfield, their final ball was sometimes lacking.
Moreover, when it came to pressing, Ødegaard, Jorginho and Granit Xhaka had begun proving they were no slouches either. With players crossing swords all over the pitch, things turned a little feisty and particularly so after Wilson and Xhaka squared up shortly before the interval.
Xhaka had been perceived to be time-wasting by going down and demanding treatment, prompting Newcastle to be slow to return the ball to Arteta’s side and the crowd to chorus “same old Arsenal always cheating”. Perhaps catching the mood, Tindall, Ramsdale and Dan Burn were involved in angry exchanges as the teams trooped off at half-time.
Given that Newcastle had done their level best to wind the clock down during their 0-0 draw at The Emirates in January, complaints about Arteta’s players deploying the same tactic looked a little ironic. Talk about being hoist by your own petard.
Anxious to make up lost ground Howe’s team began the second period at 100mph, with Isak heading on to a post after meeting Murphy’s cross. Not to be outdone Martinelli, who subjected Kieran Trippier to some unusually awkward moments, responded by curling a right-foot shot against the bar.
That was unleashed after Martinelli had deceived Fabian Schär. The Switzerland defender had struggled slightly after appearing to collect a slight injury but would have equalised had Ramsdale not performed acrobatic wonders to repel his goal-bound header.
Tempers, meanwhile, remained combustible. Joelinton felt Xhaka had made a meal of one of his challenges, going down too easily, while Schär felt Gabriel Jesus had pretended to be elbowed after a particularly dramatic collapse in the face of the defender’s attentions.
Jesus though was left smiling after Schär’s could only divert Martinelli’s cross into his own net. Martinelli’s left-wing advances had proved a recurring theme and now they had reignited Arsenal’s title challenge.
