Five years ago, Ihor Perduta of Vorskla Poltava was left embarrassed on his backside by Arsenal’s young substitute Bukayo Saka, red hot even in the minus 12 temperatures of Kiev. The Ukrainian was just the first in a long line of defenders left bamboozled by Saka, who added seven more names to his list just in the build-up to laying on the second goal for Gabriel Jesus.
Former manager Unai Emery had made 10 changes from his Premier League side for the trip to Europe and still, Saka was too young to do more than appear from the bench.
Five years on he cannot be left out of the side for club and country – and the reason was all too clear.
It’s end product.
On that debut, with the game already run, the best Saka could manage was to draw a comfortable near-post save from the goalkeeper.
These days, though, a brilliant run to put his side two goals clear is still not enough.
In between getting the same sort of treatment that saw him kicked off the pitch in Lens, he managed to be in the right place at the right time for goalkeeper Brice Samba’s parry to hit his body and ricochet back into the net.
Then he went left, he went right, mesmerised the defender, clipped a simple ball to Takehiro Tomiyasu and sure enough Martin Odegaard was there to hammer in the fifth on the stroke of half-time.
It was as if he were orchestrating Arsenal’s entire play from the right wing.
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For all their dominance, Arsenal only had around half the possession. It’s not what you get, though, it’s what you do with it. And after 66 minutes had done enough.
He left the pitch to a standing ovation to be replaced by Reiss Nelson.
Not surprisingly, Arsenal fans chanted his name all the way – they need him to be just as on song for Wolves at the weekend.
The most remarkable thing they have discovered in the last five years is that the ice packs will go on, the bruises will abate and, yes, he probably will be.
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