Arsenal 2-1 Everton
by Tashan Deniran-Alleyne
at Ashburton Grove

“WHAT is most pleasing for me is the continuity from last season, high focus and desire from our team.”

This was the reaction from a delighted Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger after he watched his in-form side cap off an impressive week by beating 10-man Everton 2-1 at Ashburton Grove on Saturday night to move top of the Premier League table ahead of the Manchester derby.

On the back of victories over Watford and Bayern Munich during the week, Wenger’s side have now won their last four games in all competitions and while the Frenchman is happy with their form since the turn of the year, he wouldn’t be drawn on the discussion surrounding a first league title since 2004 just yet: “It’s too early, the only thing I can say is since the first of January 2015 we have shown consistency.

“This week we have shown consistency and that has been questioned many times by people and it looks like we are showing that we can have consistency,” Wenger stressed.

The Gunners opened up a two-goal lead towards the end of the first half thanks to a pair of headed efforts from French men Olivier Giroud and Laurent Koscielny.

However, just before the interval Ross Barkley handed the Merseyside outfit a lifeline as his shot from just outside the penalty area took a huge deflection off Gabriel and flew into the net.

Romelu Lukaku and Gerard Deulofeu both came close to grabbing an equaliser for the Toffees after the break but their hopes of snatching a point were dashed when Gareth Barry was sent off in injury time and manager Roberto Martinez was left to rue the timing of the Gunners’ second goal and put it down to a lack of experience in his side: “We did enough to stretch the game until the last second with an option to get a positive result and that’s pleasing but obviously we are disappointed with conceding such a soft two-goal lead,” the Spaniard told reporters after the game.

“I don’t think they were creating anything of danger and we switched off a little bit and a team like Arsenal, that have the quality, they only need one second to hurt you and we should have had better concentration.”

“Maybe we showed a little bit of naivety on the second goal, a bit too young in that period, we should have controlled it, but we showed the incredible talent we have in the squad today,” Martinez added.