London: As he was awaiting the finalisation of his transfer, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang will doubtless have watched his new team from one of the finest hotel suites in London, anticipating a contract that is the most generous the club have ever agreed, but quite what he made of the Arsenal of 2018 will be anyone’s guess.
Certainly, the club’s putative new record signing will have realised in the defeat by Swansea, bottom of the Premier League at the start of the night, just why Arsenal are so eager for him to join, and he will also know the scale of the task.
The new Arsenal emerging from the departure of Alexis Sanchez currently look a great deal like the old one that lost games at critical points of the season against less-celebrated opposition nurturing a greater hunger.
In the absence of Aubameyang, Wenger even turned to the departing Olivier Giroud in the closing stages of the game to try to rescue the deficit and, if this was to be the Frenchman’s final game, then he will have something familiar to remember Arsenal by.
There was the dominance of possession undone by a vulnerability to the counter-attack, and a major blooper from one of the big names. That was Petr Cech, who swung and barely connected with a back-pass just after the hour and gave the ball straight to Jordan Ayew for the second goal.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan had only just come on for his debut by then and he could not retrieve the situation, along with the newly re-signed Mesut Ozil and Giroud, and when Sam Clucas scored the second of his two goals with four minutes left, Swansea had another remarkable win.
It has been an astonishing start for Carlos Carvalhal, who has now taken 10 points from five games and beaten Liverpool and Arsenal as well as Watford, lifting his club out of the bottom three for the time being. There was a fine performance from Ayew in attack — he also made Clucas’s second goal — and Federico Fernandez and Alfie Mawson were superb at the heart of the home side’s defence.
Arsenal had almost twice the possession of their opponents in the first half and their opening goal was beautifully crafted, but against the run of play for a team looking vulnerable to Swansea’s directness. Carvalhal played three in defence but for much of the game that became five when Kyle Naughton and Martin Olsson were required to tuck in and fill the gaps. Swansea tried to turn the tables on Arsenal through the running from deep of Clucas and anyone else who could get up in support of Ayew, including, on one rampage forward, the centre-back Mike van der Hoorn.
The plan was clear, to keep the defence locked down, frustrate Arsenal in midfield and then break rapidly on them with Nathan Dyer, Clucas and Leroy Fer. It said a lot that it was centre half Alfie Mawson who played the ball inside Laurent Koscielny to set up Clucas to score. But, before then, Swansea had conceded from a Mesut Ozil cross from the right, the last of 10 passes as Arsenal built patiently from the back up to Alexandre Lacazette, who laid the ball off to his German teammate.
Ozil had the time to roll the ball forward with his studs and then shape a ball to the back post and beyond Naughton, who could not stop Monreal arriving at the back post to score his fourth of the season. Carvalhal turned away in disgust at the lapse in concentration that had fouled up a perfectly good plan. However, his players responded almost immediately with a goal that began when Ozil loitered too long in possession on the right side in his own half and was separated from the ball briskly. Swansea did not waste time in possession and Clucas was sent on his way to beat Cech with his left foot at the goalkeeper’s near post.
It showed a degree of character about Carvalhal’s team of strugglers that they had responded so quickly, and really they had created the better chances — a collection of strenuous early efforts, including one Dyer back-post cross that Aaron Ramsey had done well to block from Clucas. Fer had been another of those prepared to look early for the pass forward, and Sung-yueng Ki is always composed in possession, although ahead of him Ayew had much work to do.
Mkhitaryan finally came on after the hour when Wenger decided that it was time for his team to step it up but, within a minute, Swansea had scored. Cech went to clear Shkodran Mustafi’s awkward back-pass that was coming across the Arsenal goalkeeper and with which he barely made any contact at all, only enough to direct the ball straight to Ayew, who kept his head to pick a spot past the Arsenal goalkeeper.
He was also brilliant for the third goal, getting down Arsenal’s left and crossing for Clucas, who bounded in to finish his second from close range to wrap up a memorable victory.
