Arsenal will still not reach the top four if Liverpool and Manchester City win all their matches, though at least the Gunners are doing their bit to put pressure on the teams above them.
Three straight wins is a decent response to the defeat by Tottenham and this latest takes them within a point of Liverpool with two games each left to play. Arsenal are beginning to play well again too, their second goal here was a thing of beauty, while Liverpool, in particular, appear to be succumbing to nerves in the final run-in. The matter is still in the hands of Jürgen Klopp and his players, though suffice to say anxiety is beginning to develop on Merseyside about Middlesbrough at home on the final day of the season, never mind Sunday’s game away at West Ham.
What this match proved, in addition to the fact that Arsène Wenger’s new formation is holding up, is that the experienced players forming the front three can still deliver. Olivier Giroud scored the first and last goals, Mesut Özil and Alexis Sánchez combined impressively for the second. On the basis of course and distance, it might be a mistake to write off Arsenal just yet. “We have 69 points now, let’s hope we can make it 72 on Tuesday night then we will see,” Wenger said. “We have shown we can stick together and keep going, if the other teams are better they are better.”
Arsenal always looked the more threatening, with Sánchez looking particularly determined but Nacho Monreal ending up with the early opportunities. When a ball from Özil came through to him unmarked at the far post he miscontrolled and saw the chance go by, then when good work from Francis Coquelin allowed Héctor Bellerín to send a cross over from the right Monreal headed against an upright.,
Sánchez sent a low shot narrowly wide after a mistake by Glen Johnson conceded possession in a dangerous area, but the only actual save Jack Butland had to make before Arsenal took the lead was early on when he tipped a speculative header from Shkodran Mustafi over the bar following a corner.
Stoke were even more tepid, offering little in the way of width or penetration and looking to Xherdan Shaqiri for inspiration. There are worse plans, though on this occasion Shaqiri was unable to come up with anything more effective than the usual wheeze of cutting in from the wing and making space for a curling left foot shot, and Arsenal were alert to that danger.
Just as the first half was threatening to peter out uneventfully Arsenal made the breakthrough with the move they had been attempting all afternoon. Coquelin held the ball in the centre before releasing Bellerin down the right, this time the pass allowing the wing-back to get in behind Erik Pieters, and from then on it was a relatively simple task to play the ball along the six yard line to find Giroud waiting for a tap-in.
Arsenal opened the second half with a stylish strike, Özil passing inside to Sánchez then gliding forward to meet a perfectly delivered return pass, one that neatly bisected Ryan Shawcross and Bruno Martins Indi to leave his teammate a straightforward finish.
Mark Hughes responded by sending on Peter Crouch and Saido Berahino, which as he later admitted he possibly should have done earlier, for the unsettling effect on the visitors was almost immediate. Mame Diouf missed a difficult chance when Marko Arnautovic put his cross slightly behind him, Martins Indi saw a header tipped over by Peter Cech, then finally Crouch ghosted in front of the goalkeeper to meet a better Arnautovic delivery and pull a goal back.
Arsenal protested furiously that Crouch had used his hand to divert the ball past Cech, and though both the initial surprise at the veteran’s agility and subsequent television replays suggested they had a point, Mike Dean was unmoved. He had not detected anything untoward, so Crouch and his telescopic reach got away with it. Rather mischievously, the Stoke sponsors nominated their goalscorer man of the match. Wenger, who had been arguing with the fourth official at the time, was unimpressed. “We scored four and kept a clean sheet,” he said. “I was suspicious of the goal from the start because I was surprised to see Crouch get to the ball from his position.”
It mattered little anyway. Before the home crowd could even begin to make enough noise to encourage a recovery, Arsenal had pushed their noses further in front, Sánchez advancing unchallenged into the area then placing a shot through Shawcross and beyond Butland. Arsenal’s best player was replaced by Aaron Ramsey shortly after that, and persistence from the substitute led to Giroud’s second 10 minutes from time.
While it is true that of the two sides only Arsenal had anything to play for, even so there is no room for complacency in the north-west. The final scoreline did not flatter the victors, it was actually the least they deserved.
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