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armory Maintained lead in Premier League title race with regular 2-0 win brentford But mikel arteta Fear that there has been a price to pay.
mikel merino and goals bukayo saka The eighth consecutive home win extended their unbeaten run to 18 matches in all competitions and extended the gap at the top to five points.
However, the Gunners, already without first-choice centre-halves Gabriel Magalhaes and William Saliba due to injury, were dealt a blow when another, Cristian Mosquera, limped off just before half-time.
Then there is even more concern, Declan RiceWho had put in another great performance, limped off with 10 minutes remaining due to a calf problem.
As his team played Tottenham, Bayern Munich and Chelsea in the past week, Arteta took the opportunity to rest Saka, Jurien Timbere and Eberechi Eze against the Bees.
But with the headache of more injuries ahead of Saturday lunchtime’s trip to Aston Villa, Arteta questioned the Premier League fixture schedule.
“The rest, that’s quite a positive word to use – we had to make some changes,” he said.
“We had a very challenging week at every level. We were asked to play them three days later with one day less recovery.
“Obviously that’s never good news. Declan had to come out. We don’t know. We’ll have to see tomorrow what he’s got.
“He can walk. He can’t play. The thing is, he’s played a lot of minutes, but at the same time, now we played Wednesday night and we have to play Saturday morning, too.
“We can play minutes but if they could please give us a little more time to recover and make the welfare of these players a little easier, that would be great.”
Arteta’s changes worked almost immediately and a fit-again Noni Maduke and forgotten man Ben White combined on the right after 11 minutes.
White, playing in the Premier League for the first time since the opening day, gathered Maduke’s flick around the corner and produced a lovely cross which Merino powerfully headed across goal.
Brentford were inches away from equalizing from a corner when Gunners goalkeeper David Raya, facing his former club, brilliantly deflected Kevin Schade’s header onto the crossbar.
Saka made it safe in stoppage time as a sub after an hour when Bees keeper Caoimhin Kelleher got a hand to his shot but was unable to stop it going into the net.
It was a fifth defeat in six away matches for Brentford and boss Keith Andrews said: “Plans don’t always work.
“We conceded the early goal and we should have done better with that. After that I thought they didn’t have too many clear chances and we took the lead in the game and made it uncomfortable for them.
“We played well and I’m proud of the performance.”