The smile on Declan Rice’s face with six minutes of normal time remaining said it all. He had just shut down Ian Maatsen as the Aston Villa full-back zoomed into the box. Arsenal, for whom Bukayo Saka scored the only goal, were authoritative and seemingly took great satisfaction in keeping Villa at arm’s length.
Unai Emery’s work‑in‑progress side struggled to test the champions, David Raya untroubled. The records will show Villa have lost their first two league matches of a season without scoring for the first time since 2002 but, despite successive defeats, this time there was no capitulation. For Villa, this was a marked improvement on defeat at Brighton in their opener.
After 31 minutes in their previous game, they trailed 4-0 and after 40 were down to 10 men. Here they could take plenty of encouragement from a promising if not fruitless performance, the debutants Zion Suzuki and Nicolas Jackson impressing, having taken the No 1 and No 11 shirts vacated by Emiliano Martínez and Ollie Watkins respectively. Suzuki and Jackson were the only changes to Villa’s starting XI but they appeared far more cohesive.
Suzuki’s eye for a pass was particularly noticeable, pinging 50-yard passes to George Hemmings, the 19-year-old who kept his place, and John McGinn within a few minutes of each other. Emi Buendía smacked the crossbar after Boubacar Kamara overawed Christos Tzolis – Martin Ødegaard subsequently asked questions of the referee, Jarred Gillett – but Jackson otherwise created Villa’s best opening. The Senegal forward, who worked under Emery at Villarreal, pinched possession from Gabriel Magalhães a few yards into the Villa half and galloped into the other before sending a near-perfect cross in from the right.
Hemmings burst into the six-yard box but was unable to convert. Villa are just the second team to fail to register a shot on target in their first two Premier League matches in a season since 2003-04, along with Swansea City in 2017-18. This fixture last season ended in despair for Arsenal, their players splayed across the turf after Buendía’s 95th-minute winner with the last kick of the game.
Arteta said that defeat still haunts him and reminded his players as much before this game. Here it was a case of role‑reversal, Eze shining after coming on for the second half in place of Christos Tzolis, who was booked after a foul on Cash and muted. Arsenal slowed things down and then punished Villa for switching off.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
