Swansea City gun down Arsenal

Swansea beat Arsenal 3-1 to keep their survival hopes alive and get out of the relegation places until Wednesday night. Sam Clucas scored a double with Jordan Ayew also getting on the scoresheet. Henrikh Mkhitaryan was a second-half debutante for Arsenal, but he could not inspire his new club to a victory as Arsenal were handed their seventh loss of the season by a gritty Swansea City.

The Swans continued their good recent form and followed their victory over Liverpool with a well-deserved victory over a lacklustre Arsenal. Carlos Carvalhal's side move up to 17th in the league and are just three points adrift of Watford in 11th who have a game in hand.

All the talk prior to kick off was about the impending transfer of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang who according to some sources was at the Arsenal training ground for a medical. But Arsene Wenger has bigger issues right now than tying up the Gabonese international.

Swansea had done all the early running and had a couple of decent chances to open the scoring but against the run of play, Arsenal took the lead on 33 minutes through Nacho Monreal. Mesut Özil found the left-back with a beautiful ball over the top but Monreal still had to do some finishing which he did wonderfully with the outside of his left boot.

That was the only bright spot in a terrible Arsenal performance as Swansea were level within a minute through Sam Clucas who simply ran between a static Granit Xhaka and Laurent Koscielny to slot past Petr Cech.

The second half started slowly but Swansea took the lead through Jordan Ayew following a howler by Petr Cech. The Arsenal goalkeeper scuffed his attempted clearance straight at an onrushing Ayew who had the simple task of putting the ball into an empty net.

Arsene Wenger responded by sending Henrikh Mkhitaryan in place of Elneny and Olivier Giroud for Iwobi, but the duo could not help Arsenal rescue the game. On the contrary, it was the Swans who went and scored the third. Again there was some poor defending from Arsenal which allowed Sam Clucas to score his second through Ayew's cutback on 86 minutes.

Arsenal are now eight points adrift of Champions League places, and with 13 games to go, they have themselves in a very difficult position to reach there. On the other hand, Swansea City will be full of confidence following consecutive victories over top oppositions and this result will go a long way in their bid to avoid relegation.