FA Premier League
ARSENAL 1 (Eze 39)
CRYSTAL PALACE 0

DON’T concede a corner, don’t give any silly free kicks away. You can almost hear the opposition managers with their final pre-match drill.

But while Arsenal have faced the tease of being ‘Set Piece FC’ for more than a year now, it is becoming remarkable that so few teams seem to be able to cope with what has almost become an inevitability. The Gunners are not really reinventing the wheel by scooping in good crosses and getting either a big man to head it into the net or a midfielder to pounce on a second ball.

Surely, if Mikel Arteta’s project could be reduced to such simplicities – and the aim by the critics has been to water down the achievements of a fine start to the Premier League season – then it would be just as simple to work out how to stop it.

Crystal Palace were the latest to fall, despite putting up stiff resistance at the Emirates Stadium this afternoon. Almost nothing had happened as half-time approached, and the ground was hardly fizzing with the electricity you might expect from a team with an opportunity to snap a 21-year wait to be champions of the land.

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Eze’s scores the crucial goal

It was clearly frustrating, then, for the Eagles’ manager, Oliver Glasner, to see his summer recruit Yeremy Pino ignore any pre-match warnings and commit a pointless foul on Bukayo Saka – a long way from goal for the dribbling winger but not for Declan Rice’s menacing centres. Sure enough, this moment of ill-discipline – Pino insisted he won the ball – would define this encounter.

Rice cut the ball into the penalty area, the heads went up, and when the ball came loose, Eberechi Eze reacted first with an athletic finish beyond his old teammate Dean Henderson in the Palace goal. The script that Arsenal would score from a set piece has been read before; the script that it should be Eze to provide his first league goal for the club against the team he so recently left is just the way football is.

The closest Arsenal came to adding to the scoreline also came from set pieces. Gabriel – the centre-back so central to the game plan at both ends of the pitch – headed a corner onto the crossbar and later collided with the post when going near again.

Having gone close three times with pretty football, there is clearly a more industrial approach this season.

Today, we saw little of Saka dancing down the wing; Jurrien Timber and Riccardo Calafiori were restricted in their overlaps; Eze decided the game but was sleepy with the ball at times; and Leandro Trossard warped in and out of the action.

The home crowd are not witnessing the free-flowing choreography of Henry, Pires, and Bergkamp of yesteryear, but there is an acceptance that to be taunted for being Set Piece FC is better than being mocked for always signing off for the summer as the runners-up.

Of course, beyond the method of getting goals is the X factor of Arsenal’s defence, perhaps the best incarnation since the famous back four of Dixon, Winterburn, Bould, and Adams. TV flashes of George Graham in the crowd traced the link back to his ‘1-0 to the Arsenal’ days – when the double title-winning manager knew he often only needed a single strike to win a match due to the consistency of the men at the back.

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Gabriel might have scored again

Further zoom-ins centred on rock star Jon Bon Jovi watching on – and that says more about how Arsenal have departed from the Graham days: a club wanting to be the best in Europe, with celebrities asking for tickets.

The same view was humming through the stadium: this match, and last week’s trip across town to play Fulham, were games that would have been drawn or lost last season as Arsenal buckled under the pressure of Liverpool’s relentless ride in first place.

Now, they are at the top with the coast clear, and it’s up to Arteta to do as Arne Slot did last term. An away trip to Burnley – a cold one as autumn nips – next week is another classic fixture where Arsenal would be happy to depart with a 0–1 success.

“I just told the boys that I probably value this victory more than any other victory this season, because we knew the difficulty of it after playing every three days,” said Arteta afterwards.

“We had a big opportunity as well with the things that happened during this weekend, and I knew we played against a team that, in my opinion, has been one of the best recently in terms of organisation, how difficult they make it, how frustrated they can make you, and the moment that you lose that concentration, they will punish you.”

On the way Arsenal are scoring, he added: “You have to find ways to score in different ways, and that’s what I think everybody’s trying to do.”

ARSENAL: Raya, Timber, Calafiori (Hincapie 82), Gabriel Magalhaes, Saliba (Mosquera HT), Rice (Merino 82), Zubimendi, Eze (Lewis-Skelly 88), Saka (Martinelli 66), Trossard, Gyokeres
SUBS NOT USED: Arrizabalaga, White, Norgaard, Nwaneri

CRYSTAL PALACE: Henderson, Munoz (Uche 90+1), Mitchell (Sosa 90+1), Lacroix, Guehi, Richards, Wharton (Lerma 90+1, Kamda (Hughes 74), Sarr, Pino (Nwaneri 59), Mateta
SUBS NOT USED: Benitez, Clyne, Canvot, Devenny