Arsenal vs Bournemouth result: Mesut Ozil shines as five-star Gunners cruise past Cherries

What an evening for Arsenal. And what a fantastic match Saturday’s north London derby promises to be. On a night when Tottenham self-destructed at Stamford Bridge, Arsenal dismantled an injury-depleted Bournemouth in style, to win their eighth consecutive Premier League match at the Emirates. Should they win at Wembley this weekend, they will move to within two points of their rivals.

It will be an early start for Unai Emery tomorrow, who plans to both rewatch this morale-boosting victory and take in Tottenham’s loss at Chelsea. “I am going to watch this match back for my analysis,” he smiled in his post-match press conference. “And I am going to watch Tottenham, too. And then I will decide on our game plan for Saturday.”

On this form, you would be a fool to bet against Arsenal shocking Spurs. Just a fortnight ago Emery’s side were left licking their wounds after a thoroughly dispiriting defeat in Belarus against BATE Borisov, but they have responded to that embarrassment marvellously. Three games. Ten goals. One conceded. A season revitalised.

That they conceded even one here was a surprise. Bournemouth barely threatened, their only goal a complete gift from Matteo Guendouzi. The teenager took too long dwelling on a Bernd Leno pass out from the back and was pounced upon by Dan Gosling, who squared for Lys Mousset to roll the ball home. Not that their hopes of a seesaw draw lasted for very long. Laurent Koscielny restored the two goal lead two minutes into the second-half and Arsenal never looked back.

To his great credit, an ashen Eddie Howe was in mood to look for any excuses after the shellacking had finally, mercifully, come to an end. “It was a difficult night for us,” he said. “But to focus on what they did well is to take ownership away from what we can deliver as a team. Arsenal player well. Some individuals player well. But we have to be clear that we can play better than that.”

Howe’s problem is that, at present, he hardly has any players to choose between: Jefferson Lerma, Steve Cook, Callum Wilson, David Brooks, Junior Stanislas, Lewis Cook and Simon Francis were all missing for Bournemouth this evening. Emery’s is that he has too many. Mesut Ozil and Henrikh Mkhitaryan — two players who have been in and out of his starting XI — were both sensational.

Let’s start with Ozil. He may be the club’s highest-paid player. He may be maddeningly inconsistent. And he may no longer be a first-team regular. But on nights such as these none of that really seems to matter. Just as in the 3-1 win over Leicester earlier this season, this was an evening when Ozil deigned to give everybody in attendance a complete exhibition of his exasperating brilliance.

It took him less than five minutes to make his mark. With practically his first touch of the match, Carl Jenkinson — remember him? — played the most wonderfully unnecessary no-look pass to Sokratis. From there the ball was worked to Sead Kolasinac, on the opposite flank, who swapped passes with Henrikh Mkhitaryan before looking up to see Ozil gliding forward.

The pass was perfect, finding Ozil on the very edge of Bournemouth’s box, their defence scrambled. But the finish was something else entirely. With Artur Boruc inching cautiously off his line and Nathan Ake quickly closing the distance, Ozil did not panic, instead lofting the most insouciant of chipped finishes into the furthest corner of the goal.

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Except — he did not just chip him. The mass of slow-motion replays that immediately began to flood every possible form of social media showed that, in fact, he had deftly stabbed his shot into the turf, the ball skimming off the ground and over Boruc’s outstretched left palm. How many other footballers can you name with their own signature move? How many others would ever have attempted such a thing?

He was at it again moments later, combining with Mkhitaryan, the evening’s other great entertainer. Former Tottenham full-back Adam Smith was guilty of playing a suicide pass direct to the left boot of the Armenian, who immediately sent Ozil through one-on-one. Ozil could have gone for glory but that would have been too easy: instead he shaped as if to shoot only to flick the ball back to Mkhitaryan to tap into an open net. The duo could hardly have played any better.

Guendouzi’s bungling may have given Bournemouth the briefest glimmer of hope, but it was extinguished just two minutes into a complete cakewalk of a second-half. From a free-kick that he won Ozil rolled the ball to Mkhitaryan, whose low cross was whipped into the goal by a lurking Laurent Koscielny, the ball deflecting off Chris Mepham prior to flying over the line.

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Arsenal’s fourth and fifth goals came were to come from far more conventional sources. As Bournemouth pressed high up the pitch in vain, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang pounced, released on the counter with a wicked outside-of-the-boot poke from Mkhitaryan. Aubameyang held his nerve, dummied his way around a thoroughly fed-up Boruc, and slotted home.

Not to be outdone by his strike partner, Alexandre Lacazette — introduced after an hour to give Mkhitaryan a rest before Saturday — got the fifth, curling home a free-kick from the edge of the box to add another layer of polish to a big win that came at precisely the right time for Arsenal.

A word on the visitors: the last time Bournemouth lost this many consecutive away matches in a single season was in 1934, when Ramsay MacDonald was Prime Minister, Franklin D. Roosevelt was President of the United States and nobody was top of the charts because a song’s popularity was still measured by sales of sheet music. And not since Portsmouth in 2006 has a team in the top flight lost eight consecutive away matches while conceding at least two goals in each.

Sat nine points above the relegation places, they play Manchester City at home on Saturday. Gulp.