{"id":6429,"date":"2022-07-31T12:23:13","date_gmt":"2022-07-31T11:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=6429"},"modified":"2022-08-04T14:31:01","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T13:31:01","slug":"six-of-the-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=6429","title":{"rendered":"Six of The Best"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color:#fff;display:inline-block;font-family:Roboto,sans-serif;color:#a7a7a7;font-size:11px;width:100%;max-width:594px;\"><div style=\"padding:0;margin:0;text-align:left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1242193052\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" rel=\"noopener\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div><div style=\"overflow:hidden;position:relative;height:0;padding:66.66667% 0 0 0;width:100%;\"><iframe src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/1242193052?et=-gQBe-0RTgVzhL065P_-mQ&amp;tld=com&amp;sig=YNdE9zDxiAlkpLLEVu74hGmCKY3VETZln7pqgQVoHRY=&amp;caption=true&amp;ver=1\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"594\" height=\"396\" style=\"display:inline-block;position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;margin:0;\"><\/iframe><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Arsenal ended preseason with yet another convincing win against a strong Sevilla side as they thumped sorry Sevilla for six on a warm late July afternoon at the Emirates. With less than a week to go until the big kick off at Selhurst Park on Friday night, Arteta fielded a very strong side, handing out Emirates debuts to former city duo, Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko and at last, William Saliba was given a run out in front of the Arsenal faithful, just three years after signing for the club! The atmosphere was a lot better than I anticipated for a pre-season encounter, largely thanks to our exciting transfer business and the general feel-good factor Arteta has managed to bring back to the club over the last year or so.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We began strongly and we won a penalty on 8 minutes, as our new Norwegian skipper clipped a lovely through ball over to Saka who was felled by a Sevilla defender and the referee pointed to the spot. Slightly contentious perhaps but it was only a friendly after all.&nbsp;&nbsp;Saka got up, dusted himself down and sent the \u2018keeper the wrong way. 1-0 to the Arsenal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We then saw a minute\u2019s applause in the ninth minute for the memory of former Arsenal and Sevilla forward, Jose Antonio Reyes who tragically died in a car crash in Spain in 2019. Wenger signed the Spaniard during the invincible season, and he scored some memorable goals, particularly after we had wrapped up the title and were focusing on preserving our unbeaten status. Without some of his goals, the unbeaten season would never have been achieved. He will always live on in Arsenal\u2019s history.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Arsenal continued their dominance. Ben White played a lovely cross field ball to Jesus who took it down on the chest, played in Xhaka, whose cross bounced around in the box and came out to Jesus who tapped home on his Emirates debut. 2-0 to The Arsenal. And just three minutes later, the Son of God had another! Martinelli found space on the left, and much like Pontius Pilate, the Brazilian put Jesus on the end of a cross. As it says in the Bible, \u201cand on the sixth day God created goal, and the goal was good\u201d. That\u2019s not the word for word translation but you get the general idea. Hopefully this time, Jesus doesn\u2019t have to sacrifice himself to save us from our sins when we lose 4-0 to Nottingham Forest in May after our squad gets struck down by a plague of locusts and we are forced to call David Seaman out of retirement to play in goal and a midfield pivot of a one legged Santi Cazorla and Charlie Patino, surrendering top 4 to Chelsea who have been playing Ashley Barnes up top all year after being rejected by every centre forward who has ever kicked a ball. I digress. Incredibly, on 19 minutes it was 4-0. A dodgy pass from the Sevilla GK found Saka who knocked it in with his \u2018weaker\u2019 right foot.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Surprisingly, no changes were made at half time. The second half was a more low-key affair, with Arsenal taking their foot off the gas as you\u2019d expect. Finally, on 77 minutes, Jesus completed his hat trick. The ball fell to him following a corner and the Brazilian stabbed home from close range. Just the seven goals in pre-season for our new number nine! Arteta then made a number of changes including Jesus who was replaced by Nketiah and it was our number 14 who completed the scoring. As Sevilla looked for a consolation, we won the ball back on the edge of our box, Xhaka sprung forward and played a defence splitting through ball to Martinelli who could have easily gone alone but unselfishly chose to tee up Nketiah for an easy tap in. 6-0 to The Arsenal. Not a bad way to finish pre-season.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, there we have it, the highly sought-after pre-season double of the Florida cup and the Emirates cup has been completed. All in all, it has been a very successful pre-season period for the Gunners but as we know the real work begins on Friday night in South London. I don\u2019t think I am alone in saying this is the most excited I have felt about the new season in a long time. Hopefully we can channel the disappointment of last season into champions league qualification and at long last get our hands on that pesky Thursday night Ropey League. Success in sunny Budapest at the end of May are the doctors\u2019 orders. Don\u2019t forget your seatbelts, because this could be quite the rollercoaster\u2026..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images Arsenal ended preseason with yet another convincing win against a strong Sevilla side as they thumped sorry Sevilla for six on a warm late July afternoon at the Emirates. With less than a week to go until the big kick off at Selhurst Park on Friday night, Arteta fielded a very [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6429"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6429"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6445,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6429\/revisions\/6445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}