FA Premier League
ARSENAL 4 (Jesus 35pen, 55 White 47, Xhaka 86)
LEEDS UNITED 1 (Kristensen 76)

ANOTHER match ticked off, some more ‘allez, allez, allez’ from the Ashburton Army and Arsenal, as March turned to April, still refusing to budge from the top slot in the league table. The bad news: it probably won’t be as easy as it was this afternoon (Saturday) for Mikel Arteta’s Gunners as they try to complete their surprise bid for the league title in the remaining fixtures.

In all honesty, they hardly had to get out of first gear at the Emirates Stadium and the only threat appeared to be coasting complacency.

The visitors arrived with a decent enough game plan, but one which was perhaps impossible to maintain for a full 90 minutes. This meant closing down the creative players, and doubling up on Martin Odegaaard in particular.

That’s all very well and admirably dogged, but chasing the ball for so long was always going to sap the energy. Arsenal just needed patience.

And as Arteta must have predicted, the holes in Leeds’ reductive strategy began to appear.

Gabriel Jesus was too quick-footed for their defence and his tap-dancing ten minutes and Luke Ayling’s clumsiness led to a  breakthrough penalty ten minutes before half time. Odegaard held the ball as if he was going to take it, before Jesus stepped forward to score by rolling his shot down the middle of the goal and watching Leeds keep Philip Meslier dive out of the way.

In an eight-way relegation fight, Leeds needed the points, so had to come out of their original frame. Gabriel Martinelli thrived on the change of approach and twisted past an exposed Ayling minutes into the second half. That gave him the space to thread a ball across the box. The advancing Ben White prodded it into the goal. Both creator and scorer had excellent games throughout.

The third came quickly afterwards when Leandro Trossard collected his customary assist by setting up Jesus for the Brazilian’s second. It was the usual of quick-thinking and perfect precision.

The striker, who has returned to action after a frustrating lay-off caused by an injury picked up at the World Cup, was fizzing about looking for a hat-trick but Mikel Arteta had a different script in mind and took him off at 3-0, presumably to manage his fitness.

Arsenal might have scored one or two more but then slipped into a sleepy passage of play during which Leeds scored a consolation goal when Kristensen’s blast from the edge of the box bounced off Zinchenko and past Aaron Ramsdale.

A dramatic comeback never really looked likely, however, and the match was settled with five minutes to go when Odegaard masterfully picked out Granit Xhaka for the Swiss to score with a header.

Arteta said afterwards that there had been a “lot of tricky situations to manage” after the international break, but the players had been “exceptional today”. He rejected the idea that every match was a cup final now in the run-in and said he was enjoying each training session and match rather than feeling the press, adding: “We just concentrate on the things we can control.”

He thanked the fans for their “belief and unconditional support” which the manager said was transmitting to the players on the field.

“You saw when we conceded a goal, the first reaction was to cheer team – that was an exceptional response,” Arteta said.

And so the drums, and the allez go on for another week.

ARSENAL: Ramsdale, White, Zinchenko (Tierney 85), Holding, Gabriel, Xhaka (Fabio Vieira 85), Partey (Jorginho 60), Odegaard (Smith Rowe 85), Martinelli, Trossard, Gabriel Jesus (Saka 60)
SUBS NOT USED: Turner, Kiwior, Nelson, Walters

LEEDS UNITED: Meslier, Ayling, Firpo, Koch (Cooper 74), Strujik. Kristensen, Roca, Aaronson (McKennie 65), Harrison, Summerville (Rutter 75) (Bamford 85), Sinisterra (Rodrigo 65)
SUBS NOT USED: Robles 86, Gyabi, Greenwood, Gray