Gabriel Martinelli keeps his cool to give Arsenal the edge against Leicester

This was the kind of no-frills away win title winners need to specialise in ticking off. If Arsenal are rejoicing in May they will remember higher-octane afternoons, but no three points can be sniffed at: they were comfortably superior to a pallid Leicester who hardly hinted at a response to Gabriel Martinelli’s winner.

Martinelli took his goal superbly less than a minute into the second half and it meant Mikel Arteta could, if he wished, save his breath about the earlier chalking-off of a strike by Leandro Trossard. At that point Arsenal might have feared a hard luck story and Arteta, as animated as ever, raged at the perceived injustice. But his players were cool and composed, while rarely at full throttle, in recording their second away win in a week. With Everton next up at the Emirates on Wednesday, they are well en route to rendering their home defeat to Manchester City an irrelevance.

The match had promised rather more. On paper it had borne a resemblance to the see-sawing test Arsenal eventually passed at Villa Park seven days previously. Leicester, usually sparky in attack but more porous than anyone in the division bar Bournemouth, appeared awkward but eminently beatable for a side inching slowly towards the title. The absence of James Maddison, laid low by a flaring-up of his recurring knee problem, certainly created a less daunting proposition.

Arteta had shaken up his own attack by opting for Trossard to operate as a withdrawn central striker, benching the ever-willing but recently profligate Eddie Nketiah. The early stages bore out the sense that Trossard’s role would be anything but orthodox; his drifts out left to allow Martinelli a path through the middle were a feature of exchanges Arsenal controlled.

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