The smile on Declan Rice’s face a few minutes from time said it all. The Arsenal midfielder had just shut down Ian Maatsen as the Aston Villa full-back zoomed into the box. Arsenal were hardly imperious, Bukayo Saka scoring the only goal, but Unai Emery’s side struggled to hurt the champions, David Raya untroubled. The records will show Villa have lost their first two league matches of a season without scoring for the first time since 2002 but, despite successive defeats, this time there was no capitulation.
For Villa, this was a marked improvement on defeat at Brighton in their opener. After 31 minutes in their last game, they trailed 4-0 and after 40 were down to 10 men. Here they could take plenty of encouragement from a promising first-half performance, the debutants Zion Suzuki and Nicolas Jackson impressing, having taken the Nos 1 and 11 vacated by Emiliano Martínez and Ollie Watkins respectively. Suzuki’s eye for a pass was particularly noticeable, pinging 50-yard balls to the 19-year-old George Hemmings and John McGinn, the pair operating on opposite flanks.
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