Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang inflict defeat on Everton to take Arsenal's winning run to five games

It seems a very long time ago now that Unai Emery insisted at one of his first pre-match press conferences as Arsenal manager that he had no immediate plans to crowbar Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang into the same starting XI.

The pair have been a revelation since Emery went against that initial judgement and started Lacazette up front with Aubameyang off his shoulder, and they did the damage here against a sub-par Everton, scoring within three minutes of each other in a second-half blitz as Arsenal maintained their impressive winning run. And just as importantly as the three points: Emery finally has his first clean sheet as Arsenal manager.

He has Petr Cech to thank for that. Arsenal’s defence endured some characteristically shaky moments in the first-half but Cech made a string of impressive saves to remind everybody that — before he was a nerve-wracked back-pass bungler— he was rightly regarded as one of the best goalkeepers in the league. This was a performance that showed everybody why he is currently keeping summer signing Bernd Leno out of the starting line-up.

“We are very happy with the goal keeper,” Emery purred afterwards, as Arsenal finally celebrated reaching the end of a match without conceding. “Petr has lots of experience and quality and he has started the season very well and is giving the performance that we want. Today he showed us that he is working well and how much experience he has.”

Emery and Marco Silva both have well-deserved reputations for playing attractive, adventurous football — but that all went out of the window here. Instead, this was the kind of blood and thunder tear-up the Premier League was built on: a scratchy, scrappy game played at a nosebleed intensity with precious little quality in the final third until Lacazette’s sublime opener.

You’ve probably already seen the goal, of course: whether in glorious HD, or thanks to a hooky feed streamed out of Outer Mongolia, or as a pixellated GIF endlessly replaying on your Twitter timeline. It was the kind of finish that people so love to pour over, struck sweetly from the very edge of the box to perfectly dip over Jordan Pickford’s outstretched palm.

How baffling that it took Emery even three games to finally begin starting Lacazette, with Aubameyang shunted out wide. Since that shift the Frenchman has been brilliant, this his second goal in his last three Premier League games.

That tactical tweak has also helped to wake up Aubameyang after his relatively sluggish start to the new campaign. Perhaps Arsenal’s record-signing is not best utilised out on the wing but he is doing a fine job there, taking advantage of a defensive balls-up and extraordinarily awful piece of officiating to prod home Arsenal’s second just moments later.

Ah yes, the officiating. Like the match, its quality left a lot to be desired, with Jonathan Moss first missing a blatant second yellow card for Lucas Torreira before linesman Harry Lennard failed to spot that Aubameyang was in an offside position for Arsenal’s second. For Everton fans, the goal brought back bitter memories of their 5-1 defeat here last season, which also featured an offside Aubameyang finish.

Needless to say, Marco Silva was furious. “We did not deserve this result, we deserved more,” he later complained. “It is a clear offside for their second goal and it is a decision at an important stage, because at 1-0, we would have kept creating problems for them. But I understand the job is difficult.”

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Everton conceded both goals in the second-half but it is their wasteful performance in the first that will surely cause Silva some sleepless nights over the week ahead. The tone was set as early as the third minute, with Dominic Calvert-Lewin squandering a fine chance on the counter, and Everton’s efforts in front of goal hardly improved.

It seems harsh to single out Richarlison; the Brazilian was Everton’s best player and any 21-year-old who so ebulliently demands the ball no matter what his position on the pitch deserves encouragement, not criticism. But he failed to beat Cech despite three good attempts on goal in the first-half, even if he did go some way to creating those opportunities himself.

He will surely consider himself mightily unlucky that he came up against Cech in such inspired form. Perhaps the veteran had been spooked by the sight of Leno starting Thursday night’s Europa League win over Vorskla Poltava. Because he was brilliant this afternoon, as well as unusually decisive coming off his line. Theo Walcott found that out to his disadvantage, with the former Arsenal favourite clattering into Cech chasing a through-ball, to sustain an ugly black eye far worse that anything suffered by Anthony Joshua at Wembley on Saturday night.

This was a truly bruising affair, with Sokratis Papastathopoulos an early casualty after sliding in hard on Walcott. (“It is his knee and we find out more tomorrow, I hope it is not too important,” Emery later clarified.) And Arsenal were fortunate to finish the match with eleven men on the pitch, with Moss somehow missing an already cautioned Torreira going in late on Lucas Digne.

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That karma briefly levelled out in the second-half when Moss also conspired to miss a quite blatant handball from Jonjoe Kenny in the Everton penalty area, for which Arsenal should have been awarded a penalty. The Emirates was incensed — only for the groans to give way to cheers moments later when Lacazette steered home that sublime finish.

Three minutes later and the game was dead, after some slack defending from Everton was compounded by a glaring error from the linesman. Kurt Zouma failed to cut out a long through-ball and Mesut Ozil was away, racing clear of a flatfooted Michael Keane to tee up Aaron Ramsey for a tap-in. The Welshman slipped, but a lurking Aubameyang — in a blatant offside position — was on hand to prod home.

Everton’s protests were far more vigorous than their attempts to claw themselves back into the game. Keane did go close with a header, but once again Cech was on hand to repel the danger. Arsenal are on a roll, with four wins from four matches and level on points with Tottenham Hotspur. Everton are winless in four.