Arsenal devastatingly hit Sheffield United for six in a Monday night mauling to keep pace at the top of the Premier League table.
Mikel Arteta ‘s free-scoring Gunners struck three times in the opening 15 minutes, pummeling their opponents with another statement of title intent. Droves of home supporters trudged out of Bramall Lane and headed out before Sheffield suffered further embarrassment, with Arsenal leading by five unanswered goals at the break.
Keep it tight in the first 15 minutes, some managers say to their team just as they’re about to walk onto the pitch. Mikel Arteta, on the other hand, tells his players to go and win the game.
For the fifth time in their last seven Premier League games, Arsenal broke the deadlock within the first 18 minutes. Here, though, Arsenal marvelously managed to score three inside the first quarter of an hour, with Martin Odegaard, Gabriel Martinelli and a Bukayo Saka-forced own goal doing the damage for a shell-shocked Sheffield United.
Symptomatic of their red-hot form, everything Arsenal touched in the first 45 minutes turned to gold, with their unchanged side displaying a level of confidence possibly unmatched by their title rivals.
The same applies to Sheffield United at the other end of the table, with the likes of Burnley, Luton, Nottingham Forest and Everton all delighted to see such a weak display from the bottom side. When Declan Rice made it five with a coolly-taken finish in the 39th minute, courtesy of Saka’s second assist of the game, it felt like the goal to wrap things up.
But there was a whole other half of football to go, with pundit Jamie Carragher labelling the Blades’ first-half performances a “disgrace” and ‘one of the worst performances he’s ever seen’.
A niggling knee injury had restricted Gabriel Jesus to just two appearances in 2024 prior to Monday night’s mauling, while Thomas Partey had been missing since the middle of October. They both came on midway through the second half, allowing Arteta to take off a number of players who’ve got more than enough minutes in their leg
The Arsenal manager is still waiting on returns for defensive trio Oleksandr Zinchenko, Takehiro Tomiyasu and Jurrien Timber, but Arsenal’s squad is beginning to flesh out at the perfect time, with the Gunners’ Champions League hopes still alive despite a 1-0 defeat to Porto in the first leg.