LONDON-. Kai Havertz scored a brace against his previous club and Ben White also scored twice, making Arsenal destroyed a withered team 5-0 on Tuesday Chelsea to achieve the most unequal victory over his rival London.
The victory ensures that Arsenal will go into the weekend as the leader of the Premier League, with a three-point advantage over Liverpool, who will visit Everton in the Merseyside derby this Wednesday. Reigning champions Manchester City are four points behind and travel to Brighton on Thursday, with an additional game in hand.
“It’s a great night,” said winger Leandro Trossard, who opened the scoring after 4 minutes. “The early goal helped us. After that we played very well. “We had a lot of opportunities and we turned them into goals.”
For Chelsea, it was another demoralizing defeat having lost 1-0 to City in the FA Cup semi-finals on Saturday, a setback that ended their last remaining hope of salvaging the season with a title.
A good part of his followers left long before the final whistle.
Cole Palmer, Chelsea’s top scorer, missed the game due to injury. But the collapse in the second half of the visit to the Emirates Stadium will surely spark new questions about whether they really are a team with signs of improvement after a massive investment during their first season under the direction of Argentine coach Mauricio Pochettino.
The strategist regretted that his players had “given up” after Arsenal’s third goal. He acknowledged the inconsistency of the entire season, with Chelsea languishing in ninth, 30 points behind the Gunners.
“When we’re not on our day, we can be very bad,” he said.
Arsenal’s previous lopsided victory over Chelsea was 5-1 in 1930.
Trossard gave Arsenal the lead with a shot at goalkeeper Djordje Petrovic’s near post, almost from no angle.
White scored the second in the 52nd, while Harvetz scored the third just five minutes later, enabled by a wonderful through ball from Martin Odegaard.
The German national team, who moved from Chelsea to Arsenal through a large transaction last summer, scored another goal in the 65th minute, with a shot inside the area.
White increased the score with his second goal, in which his volley shot went into the net in the 70th.
“The second was a bad touch but it went in,” White acknowledged.
Pochettino responded by sending centre-back Thiago Silva onto the field to prevent the beating from getting worse.
Source: AP
