Arsenal built the foundations of their new success on a desire for competition, an appetite for battle. But what happens when that spirit is insufficient, when your opponents play just as hard as you do? Well, then you bring on Bruno Guimarães and you play even harder.
Arsenal had just snatched an equaliser against a dominant Leeds side when Mikel Arteta introduced his key summer signing. The former Newcastle captain has been having to bide his time but when he entered the field just after the hour, he turned the game on its head. Arsenal had been ponderous until this point, even uncertain at times.
The passing had been intricate, not incisive, and echoes of familiar weaknesses had put the crowd on edge. Guimarães put paid to all that. Not only snapping into tackles, not only moving the ball at pace, he was desperate for everything to go faster, more aggressively, with sharper intention.
Nine minutes after coming on, he scored the winner. It was a goal that deserved to decide the contest and reflected the best of what the home side had been trying to achieve. Play developed down the left where Noni Madueke had shone, but here it was Bukayo Saka playing a one-two with Martin Ødegaard.
The captain then poked a short pass to Declan Rice who – with Guimarães now covering him – had burst into the opposition area. Rice back-heeled the ball to the edge of the area and there was the Brazilian waiting, poised, to steer the ball unerringly into the corner of James Trafford’s goal. In the time between Leeds’ opener and the winner, Arsenal had five efforts on goal, the same as in the preceding 55 minutes.
Once the lead was established, they should have had at least two more goals, with Ødegaard somehow missing from two yards out and Trafford denying Saka in a one-on-one in the final move of the match. Leeds did not feature as an attacking threat in the final half hour, so decisive was the switch in momentum. Arteta said his team had to “pinch our desire to win” to overcome a visiting side who appear no longer to be punching above their weight, but rather have moved up a class.
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