Bukayo Saka returned to Arsenal’s starting lineup and changed the game inside 45 minutes, scoring once and setting up another goal in a 3-0 lead over Fulham. It was his first start since mid-March, and the 24-year-old needed only a few sharp touches to show why Mikel Arteta has waited for him to come back fit.
Saka’s first decisive moment came when his quick footwork left Raul Jimenez on the turf before he squared the ball for Viktor Gyokeres to open the scoring. Gyokeres then returned the favor, turning the ball around the corner for Saka to finish inside Bernd Leno’s near post. The finish ended an 11-game run without a goal for Saka and brought his first strike at the Emirates Stadium since early December.
Arteta said Saka made two actions that decided the game, and he was not exaggerating. Arsenal had taken a two-goal lead only once before this stretch, in the Champions League round-of-16 tie against Bayer Leverkusen on March 17, and in the eight games since then their best lead had been a single goal. Against Fulham, that changed fast, and it changed before the match had even settled.
The selection mattered as much as the scoring. Arteta made five changes from the side that drew 1-1 in Madrid, and one of them gave 19-year-old Myles Lewis-Skelly his first Arsenal start as a central midfielder. The reshuffle paid off because Saka was back to the version Arsenal had been missing, fresh and sharp after being slowed by an Achilles injury.
Arteta said he believed the pain was gone and that had been limiting Saka’s ability to deliver certain actions. He said the winger looked loose, relaxed and like the Bukayo Arsenal know. He also said Saka’s return, in the most important period of the season, could give the team a big boost of energy and confidence.
Gyokeres was the other major figure. The 24-year-old scored twice against Fulham and reached 21 goals for the season, becoming the most recent Arsenal player to score more than 20 in a campaign since Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang hit 29 in 2019-20. That is the kind of return Arsenal recruited him for, but it also came with a twist: a week earlier, he had been met with derision from the home crowd after a misplaced pass killed a counter-attack.
Fulham offered little resistance, and their struggles were compounded by a training-ground virus. Arsenal did not need much help once Saka found his rhythm. The question now is not whether he can still decide games. It is whether his body will let him do it often enough to shape Arsenal’s run-in and, with it, their Arsenal standings.