Arsenal close gap in title race after Martin Ødegaard sinks Newcastle

Around 10 minutes of normal time remained when the outstanding Martin Ødegaard and the almost equally impressive Gabriel Martinelli were withdrawn.

Mikel Arteta evidently judged Arsenal’s 2-0 lead sufficiently secure to protect his team’s two principal game-changers here, resting their legs for the three vital games ahead.

Manchester City may be a point ahead at the top of the Premier League table with a game in hand but Arteta’s side are not about to surrender their title challenge just yet – and certainly not after coming through a significant test of character and courage on Tyneside with flying colours.

Eddie Howe’s Newcastle pushed Arsenal all the way, doing sufficient to suggest that, providing they withstand Liverpool’s late race for qualification, they will grace next season’s Champions League. It spoke volumes that Aaron Ramsdale needed to excel – and Arteta’s players to resort to the sort of time wasting tactics the Spaniard had once accused Newcastle of.

Howe is not a man given to hyperbole so when he recently, and readily, compared Alexander Isak to Thierry Henry it was easy to appreciate precisely how highly he rates the Sweden striker.

Isak started on the left of Newcastle’s front three here, creating room for Callum Wilson, the scorer of eight goals in April alone, to begin at centre-forward. Jacob Murphy, the right-sided component of that attacking trident, has not been playing too shabbily either of late and he very nearly scored after collecting Joe Willock’s cross in the second minute.

No matter that Murphy’s left foot cross cannoned off the base of a post, Arsenal were already up against it and struggling to withstand the sheer intensity of Newcastle’s pressing.

Howe’s players thought they should have