Arsenal seemed nothing short of their absolute best, when they took on Coventry City last night at the Emirates and convincingly sealed the result in their favour with a 4-0 win in the FA Cup fourth round fixture. Gunners boss Arsene Wenger was naturally delighted with his players, who put in a strong performance and shut the door in the face of complacency to cruise to a victory against the Sky Blues, who at times threatened to come back into the game, but failed to break down the Arsenal backline.
Wenger quipped after the match, “Coventry did well but we did well, especially in the first half. In the second half we dropped a little bit the pace in our game. In the last 20 minutes it became all us again because they were tired. But Coventry did fight and they had some chances at the beginning of the second half because they had a real go. Some of our players dropped a little bit because they haven’t played for a long time.”
Wenger also heaped praise upon Lukas Podolski, who opened the scoring and went on to grab himself a brace, saying, “Podolski can score goals and when you have a goal chance you want him to have it. He is a clinical finisher and he has an unbelievable short and quick backlift. He is very accurate in his finishing. He can be effective, he can score goals when he starts and when he comes on, he is always dangerous. His performances have been more convincing on the flank than in the middle until now.”
The game also saw the senior debut of promising youngster, Gedion Zelalem, who at just 16 years of age became the first player to play for Arsenal, who was born after Wenger took over the reins of the Gunners. His cameo performance was nonetheless good and Wenger purred about him, “It was a good opportunity to give him a chance to play and he showed when he came on that he is not scared, not fazed by the occasion. He wants the ball and you feel there is some vision and personality behind his pass.”
Last but not the least, the game saw a positional reshuffle, with Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain sent out to play in the middle of the park and Wenger, who had predicted earlier that the young Englishman would eventually end up in the middle, was not very wrong as he played brilliantly in his new role, to which Wenger commented, “I liked what he did tonight in the centre, especially when we had the ball. Defensively he worked hard but I liked especially offensively him and Jack together, they could be a good partnership in the future for England as well.”
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