ANDONI Iraola was pleased to recover the three points his AFC Bournemouth side dropped at Leicester at the first time of asking, while condemning Arsenal to their first defeat of the season.

The Cherries hosted the Gunners at the Vitality Stadium in the late kick off on Saturday, and sealed a convincing 2-0 victory over the previously high-flying Arsenal.

The home side benefited from a first half red card for William Saliba, but goals in the 70th and 79th minutes sealed all three points for Bournemouth. 

Reacting to the result, Iraola told the Daily Echo: “I think we've been talking these two weeks about recovering these points that I think we shouldn't have lost against Leicester, considering how the game went and it's nice to recover them against Arsenal.

“Obviously, once they receive the red card, the game becomes a little bit easier.

“Not easy, but a little bit easier. But even before, I think we were doing a good game and I think it's a very valuable three points for us.”

(Image: Richard Crease) Iraola said he believed the red card was a clear sending off, but the Cherries were unable to break the deadlock before the break.

Ryan Christie scored his first goal since October 2022 to open the scoring.

On his goal, the Basque boss said: “It was a key moment, I think, of the game because we had lost a couple of very clear chances at the end of the first half, at the beginning of the second.

“If you don't score in that moment probably you start to get desperate because we were having the ball, but it's always difficult not to beat a block like the one they do.

“We could see it against City when they also played with ten and it was good to make the difference with a routine at the end.

“Also, even in set plays, you still have this small advantage of having one more player and I think we could exploit it well, a good routine and lovely, lovely finish by Ryan.”

The two goals came from two substitutes, Christie and Justin Kluivert, as Iraola aimed to exploit the Arsenal set-up to give his side the chances to win the game.

(Image: Richard Crease) He said the tactical approach in the second period was different to the first, explaining: “In the second half we had eleven against ten, obviously they are going to protect everything in the middle.

“It was going to be very difficult to find the pockets and we decided to go with Dango [Ouattara] left, Antoine [Semenyo], right, to try to make a difference wide to put good balls because probably they were going to invite us to play wide.

“The change from Julian [Araujo] to Adam [Smith, at half time] is a little bit trying to find good quality deliveries from these inside channels, from the full back, because they were protecting very well their full backs with the wingers, with Marino sometimes arriving to protect one side, with Trossard.

“After the changes of Sini [Luis Sinisterra], Justin, Ryan is to try to introduce players [who] play better in smaller spaces because at the end it's difficult, when they put their block, we could see it against City, even top players cannot find these spaces.

“Luckily for us, we could score in the routine because otherwise it was going to be difficult.”

With the three points, Bournemouth move up to tenth in the league, with 11 points, ahead of a trip to Aston Villa next weekend.