Match report – Player ratings – By the numbers – Video

In all my many years of watching Arsenal, I can’t remember a sequence of games and late wins like the ones we’ve had over Burnley in recent times. Last season at Turf Moor there was that late, weird goal by Laurent Koscielny which, in fairness, was a handball and it drove them mad.

The return game at the Emirates saw us leading 1-0 but down to 10 men and then Burnley got a 90th minute penalty which looked like it was going to be an equaliser until we got a penalty ourselves and Alexis Sanchez stepped up and dinked it down the middle to seal the deal. Arsene Wenger got sent off for telling Anthony Taylor what a gimp he was, but once more Burnley were spewing at a late defeat.

The old saying about lightning never striking twice is clearly something of a myth, because the Arsenal lightning struck thrice as once again a contentious late winner boiled the Burnley piss to a overflowing frothy mess. Personally, I don’t think they can have any complaints, to me it looked like a penalty and if you shove someone in the box even a referee as abject as Lee Mason is likely to point to the spot.

Alexis was on penalty duty once again and thankfully his finish didn’t match the rest of his performance, and although the keeper got a hand to it, it was strong enough to beat him and take all three points. And as much as I enjoyed that, there’s something about seeing the opposition players with their hands on their heads in dismay that’s really wonderful.

The penalty award was one thing:

But the moment the penalty went in was even better:

Their heads must be absolutely wrecked with the sight of us. They had been organised and stubborn all day, making it very hard for us to create anything and just when they thought they’d done enough to take a point – at long last – they give us the chance to melt their brains once again. A chance which we duly took.

Their manager, wonderfully described by Andrew Allen in the blog on Saturday, was absolutely fuming afterwards. He said:

Football is a harsh game and sometimes it hurts you. There is a lot of me inside that is raging a lot. It was highly unlikely it was not going to get given on a day like today, that’s all I will say.

Excuse me a moment, but hahahaha. Sometimes that’s all you can do. Losing a game like that is painful, we all understand that. We’ve been on the end of harsh results and last minute defeats in the past, so I get it. It’s just that I find the idea of him raging on the inside because his own player did something that stupid particularly hilarious, especially when it contributes to a third successive injury time defeat to us.

As you would imagine, Arsene Wenger didn’t share his view that the award of the penalty was in any way soft, saying that Aaron Ramsey told him he’d definitely been fouled:

When you speak to him, he didn’t throw himself on the ground. He said he wanted to go back and flick on the ball. He was pushed in the back and he has a problem in his neck from the push. He said it was a very strong push.

Push, penalty, goal, three points for the Arsenal, and who doesn’t enjoy that? What came before it wasn’t entirely convincing, it’s fair to say. Without Mesut Ozil, who travelled with the squad but had to return to London on the day of the game because of illness, we lacked that creative spark to really open Burnley up.

They are obstinate opposition, well drilled and well organised, making it hard for any team to fashion clear cut chances. The only one I can remember is Ramsey getting on the end of a Lacazette cross from the left and putting it over the bar when he should have hit the target.

We had 10 attempts on goal from outside the box, perhaps an instruction from the manager knowing how deep they were going to play, but none of them really troubled the keeper or came close to breaking the deadlock. Burnley are happy enough with that though, and when we did make chances closer to goal they were so quick to block and defend inside their own penalty area.

Nevertheless, despite having a difficult start to the game and the home side looking better, we really got on top in the second half, pushing them further and further back, playing most of the game in their half. We didn’t necessarily put them under a huge amount of pressure in terms of chances, but we certainly did in terms of territory, and when you do that there’s always the possibility that something will happen or go your way, and so it was with the penalty.

For a long time it looked like it was going to be two points dropped and another below par away day. The penalty and the three points shouldn’t necessarily blind us to the fact we have issues on the road, but we kept going, kept plugging away and ultimately the record will show we did what we had to do and won the game.

With another trip up north midweek to Huddersfield, it’s important to build on this one, and start to address our away record in the league this season. Yesterday was only our second win, so another three points would go some way to doing that.

Update: We’re at home to Huddersfield, apologies it’s been a long weekend.

The win put us above Sp*rs and Liverpool and into the top four, and with Man Utd to come next weekend, good results could make our position in the table look very healthy (as long as you don’t look at Man City!).

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James and I are recording the podcast quite early this morning, so if you have any questions or topics for discussion, please send to @gunnerblog and @arseblog on Twitter with the hashtag #arsecastextra. We’ll have that for you mid-morning.

Until then.