Arsenal 1 Wolfsburg 0.
After the deluge the drought. Arsenal followed up Saturday's 6-0 annihilation of Lyon with a dreary 1-0 win over Wolfsburg at the Emirates Stadium on Sunday. The victory was enough to give Arsenal their first Emirates Cup title since 2010 as Villarreal failed to get the scoreline they needed to overturn the Gunners' goal difference.
The Spaniards beat Lyon 2-0 early on Sunday afternoon (24 hours after they'd defeated Wolfsburg 2-1 on the opening day of the Cup tournament) but Theo Walcott's goal on 50 minutes made Villarreal's victory irrelevant. It also gave the Gunners a boost ahead of next weekend's Community Shield clash with Chelsea, the curtain-raiser to the new Premier League season that opens on Saturday week.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Latest Videos FromThe Week
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger sent out an almost entirely different starting XI to the one that crushed Lyon with Mesut Ozil the only survivor.
Among the fresh faces welcomed by the crowd of 59,815 were Jack Wilshere and Walcott, the latter reportedly close to agreeing a new deal at the club. Petr Cech, the veteran goalkeeper, made his home debut following his summer move from Chelsea while at the other end of the age spectrum was Jeff Reine-Adelaide, the 17-year-old French winger starting an Arsenal match for the first time.
In the wake of Reine-Adelaide's appearance as a sub during the thrashing of Lyon, Wenger had described the player he signed from Lens in May for around £3m as "something special... he is a great talent".
So Reine-Adelaide proved in his first start as he gave Sebastian Jung the runaround on the right side of the Wolfsburg defence , and it was the teenager who created the only goal of the game when he cut in from the left and picked out Walcott with a sweet pass. The England man buried that opportunity and the pair combined again a few minutes later but on this occasion Wolfsburg goalkeeper Diego Benaglio was alive to the danger.
As the game wore on it petered out as a spectacle with both managers making a raft of substitutions in the closing minutes. Aaron Ramsey and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain were among the Gunners who got a brief run but neither were able to add to the scoreline.
With little to write about in the way of on-field action after the win over Wolfsburg, reporters' attention turned to Reine-Adelaide and Wenger was asked if, like a lot of his young stars, he'll be loaned out this season to gain first-team experience. "He will stay at Arsenal this season," replied Wenger. "He looks very promising but he needs to work with the first team now... in some situations of course, he has the game of a 17-year-old player but on the other hand he has shown great potential as well and looks very advanced physically for his age."
