Arsenal's away flaws exposed again as red mist descends in Leicester drubbing

1/39
James Olley28 April 2019

Arsenal's Champions League hopes suffered a serious blow after the 10-man Gunners went down to a disastrous 3-0 defeat at Leicester City.

Unai Emery's side slipped to a third straight loss and missed the chance to climb back into the Premier League's top four.

Jamie Vardy continued his hot streak against the Gunners with his late brace making it eight goals in his last nine games against them.

Youri Tielemans opened the scoring after Ainsley Maitland-Niles' first-half dismissal.

Arsenal, who remain fifth, were second best all afternoon and needed Bernd Leno to keep the score down with fine saves from Vardy and Ricardo Pereira.

James Olley assesses the key talking points in Leicester...

Soft touch on the road yet again

Action Images via Reuters

It is becoming a repetitive point to make, but time and again Arsenal fail to produce their best form away from Emirates Stadium and the effect on their top four hopes continues to be extremely damaging.

At least there is only one away game left, but few would rush to back the Gunners at Burnley on this evidence despite needing to win at Turf Moor to keep their Champions League hopes alive.

Before that, they face Brighton at Emirates Stadium in between a Europa League semi-final tie against Valencia – a route which might be fast becoming their best hope of returning to Europe’s premier competition.

Arsenal see red in Leicester again

Action Images via Reuters

It is almost a year since Konstantinos Mavropanos was sent off as Leicester beat Arsenal 3-1. It was also the last time Arsenal had a player dismissed before half-time in a Premier League game prior to today.

Ainsley Maitland-Niles might have expected to get away with an early foul inside the opening ten minutes, and Emery was furious when referee Michael Oliver followed that up with a second yellow card in the 36th-minute.

Maitland-Niles went in late on James Maddison but the tackle was more clumsy than deliberate and Emery reacted furiously, throwing his coat at the dugout after remonstrating at length with the officials.

Emery’s defence fails to inspire Mustafi

AFP/Getty Images

It is in some ways harsh to single out one player from what was another collectively underwhelming performance on the road, but this was Shkodran Mustafi’s first outing since Emery’s impassioned defence of the centre-back last Monday.

In shielding Mustafi from his plethora of critics, Emery implied the 27-year-old is better in a back-three than a back-four… and then proceeded to field him in central defence as Arsenal lined up 4-2-3-1.

Jamie Vardy has terrorised the best defences for years but Mustafi and Sokratis Papastathopoulos struggled to contain the former England striker throughout.

Mustafi coped adequately at right-back in a second-half reshuffle, but overall he did not entirely justify Emery’s defiance.

Nketiah earning Emery’s trust

Action Images via Reuters

There weren’t many positives from Wednesday’s 3-1 defeat at Wolves, but teenage striker Eddie Nketiah looked lively in a 19-minute cameo and he was thrown into the fray for the final 11 minutes here as Arsenal chased an equaliser.

It was even more of a compliment as he replaced Alexandre Lacazette and although there was little for him to feed off, the 19-year-old will take confidence he can play a more active role next season by this late flurry of first-team involvement.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in