It was a night of conflicting emotions for Cardiff City. Neil Warnock, the manager, had admitted that in “an ideal world” his club would not have had a game at all.
There have been a lot of painful questions since the disappearance last Monday of Emiliano Sala – Cardiff’s record signing from Nantes – and one of them has taken in the point of it all. How can a bunch of blokes kick a ball around with any feeling or meaning when one of their own is missing, presumed dead? On the other hand, as Warnock had also suggested, perhaps a game was what Cardiff needed “to get firing again. Warnock had described himself as “absolutely shattered”, unable to sleep, while he and some of the squad have needed psychological counselling.
It was time to get back out and do what they know best yet the truth was that the football was a sideshow. Sala was in the hearts and minds of everybody.
Arsenal were a long way from their best, particularly in the first half, but helped by a couple of tweaks from Unai Emery, they got the win that they wanted to close in on fourth-placed Chelsea. For Cardiff, it was about something else.
The travelling Cardiff supporters held up yellow placards when the teams emerged for kick-off while the captains, Mesut Özil and Sol Bamba, strode to the centre circle to lay wreaths. There was one bouquet of yellow tulips – the symbol of Nantes – and another of yellow daffodils to represent Wales. It was also a nice touch from the programme editors to include Sala’s name at the bottom of the squad lists on the back cover – hauntingly, without a shirt number.
There were banners in the away end. “Once a bluebird, always a bluebird,” read one. Another said: “We never saw you play, we never saw you score but Emiliano, our beautiful bluebird, we will love you forever.” What was meant to be a minute of pre-match silence turned into a period of applause. Life goes on; football goes on. But how to focus? That was the challenge for Cardiff. They showed their character at the outset, their professionalism, and they had the chances to take the lead.
Warnock started with two strikers and one of them, Bobby Reid, had two clear sightings before the 15-minute mark. The first came after an Oumar Niasse lay-off and a break of the ball off Mohamed Elneny. Suddenly, Reid was in but he slashed wide of the far post. Moments later, Callum Paterson picked him out with a whipped cross. Reid headed high.
Emery started with Shkodran Mustafi and Nacho Monreal in the middle of a back four, with a defensive injury crisis biting, and his team looked shaky. Monreal was fortunate not to concede a 16th-minute penalty after a nibble on Niasse. Mike Dean, the referee, felt it would have been too soft.
Dean is the official that Arsenal fans love to hate and they howled when he turned down two first-half penalty appeals. Both were for ill-advised challenges by Bruno Ecuele Manga on Alexandre Lacazette. The Arsenal striker did not make a meal of the first and, perhaps, made too much of one on the second.
Lacazette had seen an early shot blocked by Ecuele Manga, after Neil Etheridge had pushed out a Sead Kolasinac cross, while Arsenal could point to a Mustafi header from a corner that flashed wide. They knew they had to be sharper in the second half.
Emery swapped Elneny for Alex Iwobi at half-time and went to 4-2-3-1 in a bid for greater urgency and penetration. His team were better and Iwobi helped to make the difference.
It was Iwobi’s pass that released Kolasinac and led to the penalty that Dean did award. It was an entirely straightforward decision. Yet again, Ecuele Manga lunged in – this time on the marauding Kolasinac – and he clipped him. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang converted with supreme assurance to bring up his 18th goal of the season in all competitions.
Iwobi might have made it 2-0 when he eased away from Ecuele Manga only for Etheridge to block but Lacazette did gild the scoreline after he raced into a seam of space on the right to shoot low, via the goalkeeper’s boot, into the far corner. It might have been different had Mustafi not made a saving challenge on Niasse in the 66th minute at 0-0.
The stoppage-time consolation from the substitute Nathaniel Mendez-Liang was nicely taken but the story of the evening was of a club attempting to move through its grief.