Report: Cardiff City 0-3 Arsenal

Arsenal made a tough trip to Cardiff look easy today.

A brace from Aaron Ramsey on his return to his old club, sandwiched by a decisive goal from Mathieu Flamini, clinched a 3-0 victory which maintained Arsenal’s lead at the summit of the Premier League.

Dropped points by the Manchester clubs at Saturday’s venue meant that there was no easy afternoon ahead for the Gunners today. And indeed, they did not get one at all.

What they did get was a well organized Cardiff team who plugged all gaps that an unchanged Arsenal starting line-up from last weekend went looking for. Even so, Jack Wilshere almost took just 90 seconds after kick-off to break the deadlock after his sublimely curled effort struck the woodwork for the second week in the row.

There were not too many chances after that early miss apart from a glorious one-on-one chance for Olivier Giroud which the Frenchman squandered after taking too much time to finish, thinking he had been ruled offside.

But Arsenal did have their goal after half an hour and it had to be Aaron Ramsey. The Welshman on his homecoming found himself unmarked after a perfectly waiting ball from Ozil and he headed it home to make it 1-0.

A Giroud effort was cleared off the line after the restart but Fraizer Campbell almost equalized for Cardiff with a header which only Wojciech Szczesny could stop from finding the net as the hosts peppered Arsenal’s goal after the break especially on set-pieces.

But after keeping out of trouble for much of the second-half, the Gunners ended the contest with just four minutes left as substitute Flamini smashed the ball home from another fine Ozil assist.

And in stoppage time, another substitute in Theo Walcott was there to help add the icing on the cake as he set up Ramsey to score following a mercurial counter-attack.