By Samuel Adeola<\/p>\n
Mikel Merino and Bukayo Saka scored as Arsenal eased past Brentford 2-0 at the Emirates on Sunday to maintain their five-point lead in the Premier League title race.<\/p>\n
Arsenal, unbeaten in 18 matches in all competitions, controlled the game despite heavy squad rotation after a demanding week.<\/p>\n
Fit-again Noni Madueke created the opener in the 11th minute, lifting a cross for Merino to head in his second goal in as many games.<\/p>\n
Brentford threatened briefly when David Raya tipped Kevin Schade\u2019s header onto the bar, before Arsenal suffered another defensive blow as Cristhian Mosquera limped off, adding to their injury list.<\/p>\n
Keith Andrews reshuffled his Brentford side, introducing Igor Thiago, Jordan Henderson and Mikkel Damsgaard, while Mikel Arteta responded with Saka and Eberechi Eze.<\/p>\n
Caoimh\u00edn Kelleher kept the visitors in the contest with saves from Riccardo Calafiori and Declan Rice.<\/p>\n
Arsenal sealed the win deep into stoppage time when Saka\u2019s low effort slipped under Kelleher, securing an eighth straight home victory and another clean sheet for the league leaders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Samuel Adeola Mikel Merino and Bukayo Saka scored as Arsenal eased past Brentford 2-0 at the Emirates on Sunday to maintain their five-point lead in the Premier League title race. Arsenal, unbeaten in 18 matches in all competitions, controlled the game despite heavy squad rotation after a demanding week. Fit-again Noni Madueke created the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":79658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79657","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\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79657"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79659,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79657\/revisions\/79659"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}