Arsenal 3 Dundalk 0: Nketiah, Willock and Pepe blitz papers over cracks as Gunners struggle to break down Irish minnows
DEEP in the bowels of Uefa’s Swiss headquarters, someone on their club coefficient committee is quietly chuckling away to themself.
How else to explain Arsenal’s ranking as the 11th best team in Europe?
The 11th best team in England, maybe, but it’s safe to say that their Super League invitation may be some time in the post.
Three goals in four minutes either side of half-time were more than enough to see off a Dundalk team currently 128 places below them in those Uefa coefficients.
But Mikel Arteta knows there is still so much more work to be done before his side can be considered a genuine European force again.
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For now they must content themselves with stumbling around in the Europa League against the likes of the League of Ireland champions.
And at least they are comfortably on course to finish top of their group after taking maximum points from their opening two games.
They certainly made light work of Dundalk, whose entire 39,000 population could comfortably fit inside the Emirates and still have plenty of space for social distancing.
Yet there was still supposed to be no room on the touchline for their Italian coach Filippo Giovagnoli, who hasn’t yet obtained his Uefa Pro Licence.
Not that it stopped him from sneaking into the technical area to offer guidance to his players in what was probably the biggest game in his club’s history.
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Giovagnoli was coaching kids at an AC Milan training camp in New York until last month, when Dundalk asked him to take over following their defeat in the Champions League qualifiers.
But hopes of testing his managerial skills against Arsenal’s superstars were dashed when Arteta named what was virtually a reserve team.
Granit Xhaka was the only survivor from the starting team beaten by Leicester at the weekend as Arsenal took the field with one eye on Sunday’s trip to Old Trafford.
But hopes for an early breakthrough were thwarted by the determined visitors who defended in depth and got plenty of bodies behind the ball.
They even had the temerity to produce the game’s first shot on target when John Mountney was allowed far too much time and space to test Alex Runarsson from distance.
The Icelandic international keeper who arrived in a £1.8million move from Dijon last month was making his Arsenal debut and probably wasn’t expecting such an early examination of his reflexes.
It was a good 20 minutes before Arsenal threatened at the other end and it wasn’t until the 34th minute that Dundalk keeper Gary Rogers was forced into his first save by Sead Kolasinac.
Even allowing for the absence of most of his senior stars, Arteta was entitled to expect more from his team.
They should have taken the lead six minutes before the break when Pepe’s shot was deflected straight into the path of Eddie Nketiah.
But the young striker somehow stabbed wide from a yard out with the goal at his mercy.
It was a miss which summed up Arsenal’s casual approach to the night, but just when it looked as though they would be going into the interval on level terms the floodgates opened.
First Nketiah atoned for his earlier error when he prodded the ball home after Rogers had made a complete pig’s ear of Reiss Nelson’s 42nd minute corner.
Then Joe Willock was quickest to react when Pepe’s shot was blocked by Andy Boyle to completely knock the stuffing out of the visitors.
And any hopes of a Dundalk comeback were totally extinguished within 30 seconds of the restart when £72million Pepe hammered home another pass from the impressive Willock.
Job done for Arsenal with plenty still left in the tank for Sunday – but the rest of Europe won’t be quaking in their boots just yet.