When Watford beat Arsenal in the reverse of this fixture earlier in the season, Troy Deeney gave a now famous interview in which he claimed that Arsenal lack ‘cojones’. If only he and his Watford team had had them today.
Arsenal’s midfield dominated Watford’s throughout the game, with Mesut Ozil continuing where he left off from the midweek win over Milan in the Europa league. The ‘Gunners’ ran out 3-0 winners thanks to goals from Shkodran Mustafi, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Henrikh Mkhitaryan.
Deeney, for all his talk and reputation, missed a penalty at 2-0 that could have given Watford a lifeline in the game. He attempted to go down the middle but Petr Cech got enough on it to deflect it away from danger.
It goes some way to lifting the enormous amount of pressure on Arsene Wenger, especially given that he started with an unusual defence. Laurent Koscielny was rested, so Rob Holding and Mustafi lined up at the back. The German in particular has come in for a lot of criticism recently.
He went some way to amending for any mistakes after eight minutes. Ozil swung in a ball from the left after Aubameyang had been fouled and Mustafi was on hand to send a looping header out of reach of Karnezis.
It was a goal that brought up a number of milestones for Arsenal, including their 1,000th home goal in the Premier League. It was also Ozil’s 50th assist, bringing up the total in his first 141 games and setting a new record in the process.
The game finished with no further action as for once Arsenal were able to see it out in composed fashion. Arsenal close the gap on those in front of them, but in truth at this stage it is too late to salvage anything from the league season. There was however time for one more milestone - Petr Cech's long-awaited 200th clean sheet in the Premier League.
Watford, on 36 points, are not quite safe yet. It will probably require one more win for the ‘Hornets’ before they can stop looking over their shoulders.