Information reaching hitztv.com.ng has it that Aaron Ramsdale sticks out his tongue at Brentford fans at the final whistle.
Eventually, Arsenal obliged through Reiss Nelson’s early goal. From that point on it had appeared that both sides had covertly agreed that the rest of the game would be a Cold War. Each team threatened to take invasive action on the other’s goal, but neither was willing to push the big red button. Eventually though Brentford decided to do some punching of their own.
This will not go down as a classic. For much of the game, you would have been fair to question if either side actually wanted to go through the inconvenience of winning. It had the air of two schoolboys squaring up to each other only to realise that they didn’t really want to fight after all, but needing to save face in front of the playground. “Hold me back” both sides yelled as neither particularly wanted to take the first swing.
Ramsdale then flung himself to his left to deny Frank Onyeka with time running out.
Bees boss Thomas Frank said: ‘I hate losing so it’s always tough to take but very pleased with the performance. That is the thing we can build on.
‘Good performance in the first half and excellent in the second half. I think Arsenal were very lucky to get away with this with the chances we created in the second half.’
We love him, for sure. We know his character and what he brings to the team and we are happy to have him. Every player is very important. Today he had the opportunity to play and he had a really good game.
‘I’m really happy. It was two very different halves. In the second they had a more aggressive approach and we were too direct and it became a difficult game.
‘When we don’t play that well you need some big blocks in the box and we did that.’
The winning goal came after only eight minutes thanks to a mistake by the recalled Mathias Jorgensen, whose pass back wrong-footed Ethan Pinnock.
Eddie Nketiah leapt on the error, cutting the ball back for Nelson who stepped past a sliding Nathan Collins before neatly finishing past Mark Flekken.