Match report – Player ratings – Arteta reaction – Video
After three difficult away games, and no shortage of incident and drama, it was nice to be home last night and fun to enjoy a comprehensive win over Bolton in the Carabao Cup.
As expected, Mikel Arteta made changes, with first starts for Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly, while there were full debuts for Josh Nichols at right back, and 16 year old goalkeeper Jack Porter. There is probably a good question to be asked about how we found ourselves in a situation like that, but let’s leave it for another day, because if you turn 16 in July and make your debut for this club just a couple of months later, you deserve your time in the spotlight.
There was plenty of experience ahead of the young keeper, and it was one of those who opened the scoring. Nichols provided a cross, the ball came to Declan Rice via a fresh-air kick from a Bolton defender, and the speed at which he took a touch, shifted the ball, and shot gave the visitor’s goalkeeper no chance at all.
There has been so much chat about Nwaneri and Lewis-Skelly though, they are the two closest to the first team at this point, so it was lovely to see how the second goal came about. The left-back played an excellent pass inside the defence for the run of Raheem Sterling, he looked up, played a great ball across and Nwaneri was there to slide in and make it 2-0 with his first senior Arsenal goal. When Sterling provided his first ever career assist in this competition, last night’s goalscorer was 6 years of age.
Early in the second half, Nwaneri got his second. Bolton were sloppy at the back again, Rice intercepted, and the 17 year old took it on and finished through the keeper who will probably feel he should have done a bit better. What a night for him though. The goals will stand out, obviously, but he looked really good on the ball, and while I think the young players were probably told to keep it simple, you can see there are levels to his…
Source link : https://arseblog.com/2024/09/arsenal-5-1-bolton-the-kids-are-all-right/
Author : arseblog
Publish date : 2024-09-26 06:28:22
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