Arsenal continued to prove their doubters wrong on Sunday with a potent 2-0 win over Newcastle United. The Gunners recorded their first clean sheet since March and cut their gap to Manchester City to one point.
Newcastle did provide a number of brief scares for Mikel Arteta's men with Jacob Murphy and Alexander Isak striking the post but Arsenal took charge of proceedings thanks to Martin Odegaard's goal from range.
Fabian Schar's own goal in the second half sucked the energy out of St James' Park, with Aaron Ramsdale able to end his difficult run without a clean sheet.
READ MORE: Arsenal player ratings vs Newcastle as Martin Odegaard excellent and Granit Xhaka superb
There were a number of impressive individual performances within the north Londoners' squad. Gabriel Martinelli got the better of Kieran Tripper down the right and Granit Xhaka produced a near-perfect midfield performance but it was Jorginho who was awarded Man of the Match by Sky Sports and Gary Neville.
The January signing played the full 90 minutes on Tyneside, partnering Odegaard and Xhaka in the midfield trio. After setting up Odegaard's opener, Jorginho was superb throughout the contest, bringing his wealth of experience and calmness to Arsenal's title race.
Jorginho completed more than 80% of his passes, won 63.6% of his duels and made three important tackles to deny Bruno Guimaraes and Joelinton the time and space to endanger the Gunners' backline.
Sky Sports summed up his performance with a graphic during the latter end of the game. The ex-Chelsea man ranked highest in Arsenal's team for touches (68), successful passes (42), passes received from backline (27), possession won (8) and clearances (3).
"My player of the match is Jorginho," Neville said on Sky Sports. ."It was so important today for Arsenal. Not just to get closer to Man City but for themselves, to know they can come to a big away game and win, after what happened at Anfield and the Etihad.
"He's added so much leadership, experience and composure. All day long he’s been demonstrating to the rest of his team-mates what he wants from them and they’ve lacked that in recent weeks.
"He was the Player of the Match by a mile today. They’ve been wobbling Arsenal and they were on the ropes at times today but Jorginho has brought calmness and leadership to them just at the right time."
After the Gunners missed out on Moises Caicedo in January, sporting director Edu Gaspar instead signed Jorginho for £12million. Five months later, the Italian is proving his worth at a time where his new club needs him the most.
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