{"id":381455,"date":"2025-12-31T00:14:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T00:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/381455\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T00:14:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T00:14:09","slug":"arsenal-smash-aston-villa-4-1-to-extend-premier-league-lead-chelsea-and-manchester-united-both-draw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/381455\/","title":{"rendered":"Arsenal smash Aston Villa 4-1 to extend Premier League lead; Chelsea and Manchester United both draw"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aston Villa’s incredible rise<\/a> towards the top of the Premier League<\/a> table has been slammed shut as Arsenal<\/a> recorded a dominant 4-1 win at home.<\/p>\n

After 11-straight victories in all competitions, Villa went into the clash with the league leaders on Wednesday morning (AEDT) full of confidence.<\/p>\n

But in the space of just 30 minutes in the second half, Unai Emery’s men were dealt a brutal reality check by the Gunners.<\/p>\n

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Martin Zubimendi celebrates Arsenal’s second goal\u00a0Arsenal FC via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Garbial Magalhaes was the first to strike just minutes after the break, heading home from a corner to give the hosts the lead at Emirates Stadium.<\/p>\n

With the game still in the balance, Villa looked to work their way out of trouble but a blunder inside their own half gifted Arsenal a second goal through Martin Zubimendi.<\/p>\n

Leandro Trossard made it a three-goal lead for Arsenal when his goal was awarded following an extensive VAR check.<\/p>\n

Gabriel Jesus put the icing on the cake in the 78th minute with a brilliant curling right-foot shot from the edge of the box that beat Villa keeper Emiliano Mart\u00ednez.<\/p>\n

Football’s new home, Stan Sport<\/a>, is the only place to watch the Premier League, UEFA Champions League, FA Cup, WSL, European World Cup qualifiers, J.League, NSWL and K League<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Gabriel Jesus celebrates a goal against Aston Villa\u00a0Arsenal FC via Getty Images<\/p>\n

As he ran towards the corner flag in celebration, the Arsenal star lifted his shirt to reveal a white T-shirt that read “I belong to Jesus” and pointed to the sky.<\/p>\n

Ollie Watkins scored a late consolation goal for Villa in stoppage time. <\/p>\n

Elsewhere, the struggling Wolves managed to walk away from Old Trafford with a 1-1 draw against Manchester United, who struck first through striker Joshua Zirkzee but gave up a goal on half-time through Zadislav Krejki. <\/p>\n

In the earlier slate of games on Wednesday, Chelsea dropped more points and fell further behind the Premier League lead with a 2-2 draw against Bournemouth.<\/p>\n

Chelsea are now stuck in fifth spot and remain two points behind Liverpool and 15 points behind the top-of-the-table Gunners at the midway point of the season.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Chelsea players at full time\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

Everton produced a clinical 2-0 win over Nottingham Forest, while relegation battlers West Ham gave up the lead twice in a 2-2 draw with Brighton Hove-Albion.<\/p>\n

Newcastle won 3-1 away against Burnley after scoring two goals in the opening seven minutes as Joelinton and Yoanne Wissa got the trip off to a flying start.<\/p>\n

Manchester City will play on Thursday (AEDT) as they look to keep in touch with Arsenal at the top of England’s top-flight. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aston Villa’s incredible rise towards the top of the Premier League table has been slammed shut as Arsenal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-381455","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}