Twitter Reacts to the Good & Bad of Arsenal, Lacazette’s ‘Kick’ & Exciting Leeds First Half

The watching world were treated to two Arsenal performances for the price of one on Monday evening. A terrible first half saw them overrun by Leeds, before Reiss Nelson’s goal capped a 1-0 victory, better second 45 minutes and progression to the FA Cup fourth round. ​

For those who haven’t watched Leeds or any previous Bielsa teams in action, the opening half was a crash course in why he is so widely revered. They played without fear, were dominant in possession and created chances – the best of which came courtesy of Patrick Bamford and Ezgjan Alioski.

​​​​From an ​Arsenal perspective, fans on Twitter were right to question Mikel Arteta’s formation and the personnel playing within it. A back four with Sokratis and Sead Kolasinac as full-backs enabled Leeds’ wingers to run them ragged, cutting inside and running in behind to great effect.

At the heart of the team, two pairs seemed uncomfortable and overrun by their opponent’s energy. David Luiz and Rob Holding were sloppy when playing out from the back, while Granit Xhaka and Matteo Guendouzi lost track of their runners, occupied the same space and generally seemed a yard behind the visitors.

Put the four players together and Leeds had a field day between the lines and behind the defence.

​​Surely Arsenal couldn’t be as bad as they were in the opening 45? Thankfully not! Whatever home truths Arteta had to say at half time, it resulted in the Gunners playing with higher intensity and much further up the pitch.

They began to win the midfield battle and got their attacking players into the game, which sparked two questions on Twitter: where was this Arsenal in the first half? What happened to the Leeds of that first 45?

The new and improved Arsenal made their dominance count just ten minutes into the second half, as Reiss Nelson converted a ball that took more than one deflection between ​Alexandre Lacazette‘s cross and hitting the back of the net. It took the sting out of a Leeds side who had been made to rue their first half wastefulness.

The performance might have been better, but there was still time for some Arsenal petulance and they were arguably lucky to have a full compliment of 11 players on the pitch.

Xhaka had been on a one-man mission to rack up the same cynical foul as many times as possible, which went unpunished time and again – surely there were at least two yellows in his cumulative fouls?

Lacazette, meanwhile, was lucky to escape punishment via a VAR review as he kicked out at a ​Leeds player – it threw up more questions about the process and Twitter was divided.