Mesut Ozil and Henrikh Mkhitaryan put on an Emirates masterclass as Arsenal thrashed Bournemouth to retain their place in the Premier League top four.
With fellow hopefuls Chelsea and Manchester United also securing victories, the Gunners stayed fourth – but this was in much more emphatic style as they eased to a 5-1 win over a hapless Cherries side.
Eddie Howe’s men have now lost their last nine league games away from the Vitality Stadium and were second-best for much of the night as Ozil and Mkhitaryan ran riot.
The pair scored the first two goals before Lys Mousset pulled one back for Bournemouth – only for Laurent Koscielny, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette to seal a comfortable win with second-half strikes.
Arsenal racked up their biggest home win under head coach Unai Emery and maintained their grip on a top four place with a 5-1 win over Bournemouth despite making six changes.
The night could barely have gone any better, so much so that a chant of “Tottenham Hotspur, we’re coming for you” rang out midway through the second half with thoughts already turning to Saturday’s mouth-watering north London derby at Wembley.
Spurs will begin that game as favourites – especially given the Gunners’ poor away form – but they head across town with renewed confidence after running out easy winners against a Bournemouth side that has now lost nine consecutive League away games.
This was the first time under Emery that Mesut Ozil started in an Arsenal team set up without a number ten and a three-man defence.
The suspicion was that Emery did not trust Ozil to perform the requisite work without the ball in such a shape and while Bournemouth did not provide a tough test in that regard, the 30-year-old produced a reminder of his talent in possession with a superb first-half display.
After scoring with an unorthodox finish in which he appeared to hit the ball down into the ground to flummox Artur Boruc, he exchanged passes with Henrikh Mkhitaryan to sublime effect for Arsenal’s second.
More difficult challenges await but this will go some way to disproving Emery’s theory he cannot be effective in this system – one which is in fact very similar to the formation used by Arsene Wenger (with Ozil in it) towards the end of his tenure.