Jakub Kiwior shines as Arsenal seal Champions League football 

Jacob Kiwor has long since answered the questions that were raised about him when Gabriel suffered his season ending injury

After weathering a first half onslaught against Newcastle we rallied to claim a crucial home win to seal Champions League football and all but claim second place again.

Here are 3 things that stood out for me, writes Ian Mills

 1 - Jakub Kiwor shines in the absence of more esteemed colleagues

– Jacob Kiwor has long since answered the questions that were raised about him when Gabriel suffered his season ending injury.

However, in this game he showed his composure and strength to partner firstly William Saliba until half time and then switched to the right side of our central defence to ensure Riccardo Calafiori could play in his natural position. Indeed, the pairing helped to speed up our movement as we produced a second half much more like we are capable of.

2 - Raya’s kicking was as bad his saves were good

– as early as the third minute Newcastle could have been ahead after Raya’s poor pass into midfield however our soon to be officially new ‘number one’ made up for his error with the first in a series of vital first half stops to deny in turn Bruno Guimaraes, Harvey Barnes, Dan Burn and Sven Botman as the barcodes played with the confidence of a team who have finally ended a very long wait for a trophy and one that had had our number in the previous three encounters this season. Raya’s ‘radar’ continued to be off for the remainder of the game, thankfully his reflexes were totally on point.

3 - Rice’s whipped winner

– Declan Rice scored his ninth Arsenal goal of the season with a strike worthy of winning any match. He arrowed the ball into the net with tremendous whip reminiscent of his free kicks against Real Madrid. Add to those goals, 10 assists to make it 19 goal contributions in total.

Those statistics seem befitting of Rice’s price tag. In fact, Rice has now scored more goals for us than he did in his entire West Ham career.  

He clearly believes he can add yet more goals to his game and his non-stop energy in the second half helped ensure we saw out a vital win.

We signed a game changer in Declan, we now need to do the same with our attacking additions this summer to finally land the silverware this squad deserves.