Thursdays this season have serves as a relief period for Arsenal supporters. For many weekends, we have watched our team fumble only to get consoled with Europa League victories around midweek.
Mikel Arteta went to Ireland with his boys looking to complete the group stage unbeaten and that was achieved at fulltime.
Calum Chambers made the starting lineup for the first time in 347 days after a long spell on the sidelines as a result of an injury. Reiss Nelson could not feature against Dundalk courtesy of a clash of heads in traning.
Pablo Mari started as well as Shkodran Mustafi took charge of the team as captain for the night. Eddie Nketiah spearheaded the attack.
Our impressive start paid off in no time when Eddie Nketiah snatched a clearance attempt from Andy Boyle and lobbed Gary Rogers to open the scoring record for the night.
Mohamed Elneny stunned viewers moments later when he struck one from 25 yards, the way Alexandre Lacazette did in our last Europa match with Rapid Vienna. It was an unexpected one, so the host goalkeeper had no chance on that one. The Egyptian doubled our lead.
Dundalk got one through what we can call their first major attack and it was Flores who involved in a one-two then fired past Alex Runarsson.
Rogers had to deal with attempts from Pablo Mari and Ainsley Maitland-Niles plus a freekick. Folarin Balogun again came in as a substitute and he made good use of it.
He started out by setting up a nice ball for Joe Willock to thump in our third before the former sealed our win with a finish into the bottom corner. Hoare headed home to earn Dundalk another which put the score at 4-2 in Arsenal's favour at the end of ninety minutes.
That was six wins out of six Europa League group stage matches so far this season. We ended top of Group B with eighteen points. We last got six consecutive victories in European competition in November 2015.
We remain unbeaten in our last nine away games in Europe. This is the first time we will go that long in Europe since March 1995.
Arsenal will resume league action at the Emirates Stadium when they play Burnley on Sunday. Following that will be Wednesday's match with Southampton on the same ground.
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