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Arsenal's brilliant form in the 2025-26 continued with a win over Portsmouth in the FA Cup. It was not the most challenging game of all time for the Gunners, but after initially going behind through a Portsmouth goal, they did have to lock in and make things a bit more comfortable.
Arsenal needed some room to breathe, but it ended up working out just fine, with a hat-trick from Gabriel Martinelli allowing them with a lot of comfort.
They advanced to the next round of the FA Cup without any issues, and will hope to keep advancing until they are able to win the trophy for the first time since 2020.
One key difference between Arsenal this season and last is now obvious
Even in that win over Portsmouth, there were a few things that became clear. Arsenal's team is obviously great, and it has been for a few seasons now.
However, it was put into perspective how great this team is, and how much better it is from last season. And how one key difference is now noticeable for Arsenal fans.
After the game, manager Mikel Arteta was asked about the win over Portsmouth, and how it was like to make 10 changes to the team and still end up winning, to which he praised his team's depth.
He said: "When we make that many changes there is an element of cohesion that is not going to be as perfect as we want.
"We started the game exactly how we didn't want to, giving them momentum and an early goal and hope, and then we had to fight it back, and credit to them because they made it difficult for us especially in the early stages of the game.
"The more we started to do the simple thing right, and be a little more dominant, then the quality took over."
Arteta is spot on with this. These are some players who have either not played at all, or played in some capacity with some other players. Some of these players have not played together for Arsenal in a very long time, so the cohesion was never going to be at 100 per cent.
Despite that, Arsenal looked comfortable, and were able to dispatch away a team that was hoping to prove challenging to them, especially after conceding that goal.
Fortunately for Arsenal fans, these new players have also given a sense of confidence and ability to this team, where even if there is an upset on the cards, most of the time, Arsenal are able to come away with all three points.