Emergency striker Merino rescues Arsenal with double to sink Leicester

Mikel Arteta asked his Arsenal squad to show they could continue to fight for the title despite stomaching a significant injury to Kai Havertz. For 80 minutes it seemed fears of being blunt in attack would be well founded in a frustrating stalemate at struggling Leicester but then Ethan Nwaneri dinked a feathery cross into the box and the substitute Mikel Merino, unmarked between Wout Faes and Woyo Coulibaly six yards out, twisted his head to power in the first of two late goals. Merino, who replaced the ineffective Raheem Sterling, sealed victory with three minutes of normal time to play, to maintain Arsenal’s challenge.

Arteta began with Leandro Trossard as a false 9, Sterling to his left and Nwaneri to his right in a three-pronged attack but until Merino’s header the Arsenal manager must have been wondering how else to penetrate Leicester, now without a clean sheet in 21 matches in all competitions.

This was the first Premier League game in which Arsenal began without any of Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Martinelli, Gabriel Jesus or Havertz, who is out for the season with a hamstring injury, for the first time in almost four years. But Merino ensured Arsenal close the gap to Liverpool, the leaders, to four points for at least 24 hours.

The game had been approaching the point when William Saliba, a striker at his boyhood club Bondy in north-east Paris, where he was coached by Kylian Mbappé’s father, must have thought about piling forward from centre-back. Sterling and Trossard both fluffed half-chances.

Mikel Merino heads Arsenal’s first goal past Leicester’s Mads Hermansen. Photograph: Chris Radburn/Reuters

It was inevitable that Nwaneri, who played off the right of a three-pronged attack, was involved in the decisive moment. The 17-year-old was Arsenal’s most dangerous player, full of juice, deft in possession. Just after the hour the teenager’s shot skimmed the brow of the Leicester bar and with time ticking in the second half he cracked a shot against a post, via the fingertips of the Leicester goalkeeper Mads Hermansen.

Hermansen tried to rouse his teammates after conceding but the game was over on 87 minutes, Merino capping a slick counterattack at the back post. The substitute Riccardo Calafiori brought the ball forward and passed on the baton to Trossard, who curled a ball towards the far post and Merino did the rest.

For Ruud van Nistelrooy, it was another painful brush with Arsenal pre-match, though Martin Keown did at least apologise for “all the shenanigans that went on back in the day”, referring to their 2003 clash at Old Trafford.

On a day when Leicester fans staged a series of protests, an encouraging afternoon turned difficult. The home support streamed out long before the final whistle but the away fans were left serenading Merino, their hero on the day.