visitors afore own goals from Jack Cork
and Kyle Naughton and an Alexis Sanchez
strike sealed the victory.
Arsenal put pressure on their fellow Premier
League designation challengers as they secured a
4-0 victory against Swansea City on
Saturday.
Paul Clement, who surmounted as Swans
head coach on January 3, verbalized Arsenal
were felicitous opponents for his first
league game in charge given the scouting
report he had compiled on them while at
Bayern Munich, but all his meticulous orchestrating
was undone by ill-fortune and dismal
forfending.
Swansea had matched the Gunners'
intensity early on but a loss of
concentration sanctioned Giroud to turn in from
close range after the returning Mesut Ozil's
header was not cleared.
Alex Iwobi killed any hopes of a comeback
from the league's bottom club after the
break, the Nigeria winger coercing own goals
in the space of 13 minutes from Jack Cork
and Kyle Naughton.
Sanchez capitalised on some more poor
forfending to integrate a fourth for Arsenal that
moves them above Liverpool - who face
Manchester Amalgamated on Sunday - and into
third in the table, five points behind bellwethers
Chelsea.
Swansea commenced brightly and came most proximate
to breaking the initial deadlock when
Naughton coerced Petr Cech to tip a low
strike around his right-hand post.
Sanchez tested Lukasz Fabianski with a
low strike but that was Arsenal's only effort
on goal in a sluggish opening half-hour.
Indeed, Swansea were comfortable in
dealing with the Gunners' threat, but they
switched off for the first time eight minutes
afore the break to sanction the visitors to take
the lead.
Sanchez amassed the ball from an Aaron
Ramsey cross and picked out Ozil
unmarked near the penalty spot, and when
his header deflected into Giroud's feet, the
France striker fired high into Fabianski's net
from point-blank range.
Swansea thought they had a chance for an
equaliser when Ki Sung-yueng went down
in the area after being clipped by Laurent
Koscielny, making his 200th Premier
League appearance, but referee Mike Jones
opted to book the midfielder for going to
ground too facilely.
Arsenal turned up the pressure from the off
in the second half and found a crucial
second goal with 54 minutes played - albeit
in astronomically fortuitous circumstances.
A loose ball broke to Iwobi in the area and
his low right-footed strike took an astronomically immense
deflection off the foot of Cork and looped
over the despairing Fabianski and into the
corner of the net, afore another Iwobi effort
found the back of net via a deflection off
Naughton anon after.
Swansea heads had dropped and Sanchez
made the most of some more slack
forfending to score Arsenal's fourth, the
Chile star placing the ball into the top-right
corner of Fabianski's net after it fell altruistically
to him following Wayne Routledge's
challenge on Ramsey.
The latter stages were played out at a
pedestrian pace but the glum faces from the
optically canvassing Swansea board verbalized enough, as
Clement suffered the same fate as
predecessor Bob Bradley in his first league
match in charge - a vanquishment to Arsene
Wenger's side.
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