LENOMENAL
Bernd Leno made nine saves against Leicester - an average of one every 10 minutes - and without him in supreme form our defeat would have been more comprehensive.
The pick of the bunch was probably Leno’s clawing stop to keep out a powerful first-half header from Ndidi, but Vardy and Maddison might disagree after watching fine efforts of their own repelled by the German.
Leno made three saves in the space of 20 seconds in the second half, and although Vardy’s late goals gave the scoreline a more lopsided look, that shouldn’t detract from our goalkeeper’s fine display.
UNLUCKY AINSLEY?
Maitland-Niles made two tackles in this game and was booked for them both. The first - a barge as Leicester launched a counter-attack - was deemed “not a yellow card” by Unai Emery.
“I didn’t agree with that decision,” said our head coach. It did look harsh, and you felt for Maitland-Niles after the second one too. He slipped while trying to get close to Maddison and, in his haste to make up the ground, made a challenge that would have been far better judged had he not lost his footing.
We regrouped at half-time, Koscielny coming on for Iwobi and Mustafi sliding across to right back, but the loss of Maitland-Niles was too big to overcome.
PLAYING ON THE BREAK
Unai Emery sprang a minor surprise by opting for a 4-4-2 formation against Leicester, with Iwobi and Mkhitaryan offering the width. It made us relatively compact in the first half as we looked to contain Leicester before hitting them on the counter-attack.
Those tactics partly explained the home side’s vastly superior possession stats - even before the red card - but we did threaten sporadically on the break, Lacazette and Iwobi going close on the end of flowing moves.
Maitland-Niles’ dismissal threw those plans into disarray - with 10 men we were left clutching at straws, our goal threat reduced to Xhaka’s delivery from set-pieces.
Copyright 2025 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.
