The match settled. Arsenal pushed. Palace absorbed. The shape held.
In the thirty-fourth minute, the counter-attack came.
Kovačić received from Dann under pressure from Ramsey.
He turned the Welshman with the hip-drop, the same move he had used against Xhaka in the first leg, the same move he had used against Gross at Brighton, the movement that was becoming as identifiable as Zaha's step-over or Rodríguez's outside-of-the-boot pass. He carried the ball ten yards, drawing Mustafi out of position, and looked up.
Eze was running. Not the cautious, positional run of a player fulfilling a tactical instruction. The run of a boy playing on the pitch he had dreamed about since he was six years old, his legs carrying him faster than the tactical plan required, his eyes locked on the space behind Koscielny that was opening like a wound because the thirty-two-year-old's legs could not keep pace with a twenty-year-old's fury.
