{"id":79471,"date":"2025-12-01T06:25:29","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T06:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=79471"},"modified":"2025-12-01T06:25:29","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T06:25:29","slug":"merino-rescues-arsenal-as-10-man-chelsea-hold-gunners-1-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/12\/01\/merino-rescues-arsenal-as-10-man-chelsea-hold-gunners-1-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Merino Rescues Arsenal as 10-Man Chelsea Hold Gunners 1-1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Samuel Adeola<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Mikel Merino scored the equaliser as Arsenal were held to a 1-1 draw by 10-man Chelsea in a tense Premier League clash at Stamford Bridge on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea went down to 10 men in the 38th minute after Mois\u00e9s Caicedo was sent off following a VAR review for a high challenge on Merino.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the setback, the Blues took the lead shortly after the break when Trevoh Chalobah headed in Reece James\u2019 cross.<\/p>\n<p>Arsenal responded before the hour mark, with Bukayo Saka setting up Merino, deployed as a makeshift striker to level the score.<\/p>\n<p>The result extends the Gunners\u2019 unbeaten run at Stamford Bridge to seven matches and stretches their all-competition streak to 17 games. They remain top of the league, five points ahead of Manchester City.<\/p>\n<p>Chelsea pressed for a late winner through Pedro Neto, Liam Delap and Wesley Fofana, but Arsenal held firm.<\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere, Alexander Isak scored his first league goal for Liverpool in a 2-0 win over West Ham, with Cody Gakpo adding the second to ease pressure on Arne Slot.<\/p>\n<p>Manchester United came from behind to beat Crystal Palace away, with Joshua Zirkzee and Mason Mount scoring for Ruben Amorim\u2019s side.<\/p>\n<p>Wolves\u2019 struggles continued with a 1-0 loss to Aston Villa. Super Eagles forward Tolu Arokodare featured late on, but the club remain bottom after 13 winless weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Samuel Adeola Mikel Merino scored the equaliser as Arsenal were held to a 1-1 draw by 10-man Chelsea in a tense Premier League clash at Stamford Bridge on Sunday. Chelsea went down to 10 men in the 38th minute after Mois\u00e9s Caicedo was sent off following a VAR review for a high challenge on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":79472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172,175],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79473,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79471\/revisions\/79473"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}