Despite all the 'bad' news circulating around Arsenal, such as Marcelo Flores being upset about being left out of the pre-season squad to tour America, Omari Hutchison's defection to Chelsea and Oleksandr Zinchenko's inclusion in Manchester City's pre-season squad, the 2-0 demolition of Everton gave fans something to cheer about.
The truth was that the second half was nowhere as good as the first, from an Arsenal perspective, yet never did the Gunners look like surrendering their two-goal advantage.
Player ratings:
Turner 7 - never looked likely to concede.
Cedric 8 - tidied up well at the back, when needed to.
(Bellerin 7 - looked quite sharp.)
Saliba 7 - mostly played it safe.
(Mari 6 - didn't make much impact.)
Gabriel 7 - quite solid.
(Walters 7 - the youngster has been well-coached, as he kept it simple.)
Tavares 6 - not at his best yet.
(Holding 7 - passed well in a back three in the second half.)
Partey 6 - not influential.
(Elneny 7 - dominated the midfield, in the second half.)
Xhaka 7 - a good shift and hit the post with a header from a corner.
(Sambi 6 - played down the left, but couldn't make much of an impact.)
Saka 7 - scored the second goal and was a handful for Everton.
(Pepe 6 - nearly got in a fight at the end of the game, so is clearly frustrated to be a squad player at best.)
Odegaard 6 - a quiet game for the skipper.
(Maitland-Niles 5 - I only noticed he was on the pitch when he hugged Everton's Iwobi, a former Arsenal team-mate, at the end.)
Martinelli 7 - gave Everton problems.
(Nelson 5 - couldn't impose himself on the game much in 18 minutes.)
Jesus 8 - one goal and one assist in 45 minutes, plus another good shot on target. Hopefully, he wasn't too badly injured by Godfrey's rash, OTT challenge.
(Nketiah 6 - faced a tougher defence in the second half with Tarkowski in the team.)
Injuries
Ben White (quad)
Emile Smith-Rowe (muscular)
Kieran Tierney (muscular)
Takehiro Tomiyasu (muscular)
Fabio Vieira (bone)
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