There is no doubt that Arsenal were completely overrun by West Ham in the first half hour of yesterday’s game at the London Stadium, and it looked like the Hammers were fully awake while we were still yawning coming down the stairs.
It was good to see Thomas Partey fit and able to play the full 90 minutes for a change, but he must have been stunned by the way that West Ham ran through our defences like butter. I’m sure that didn’t happen very often when he was at Atletico! But luckily we came back stronger in the second half. “I think we could have done better from the beginning,” he told Arsenal.com. “They dominated from the beginning and we were completely lost.
“I think they came out very strong. They overloaded us on the outside and they are strong with crossing. We allowed them too much time with the crossing and that hurt us a lot. Second half, we made sure we blocked all the crosses. From there we started to dominate.
“We stuck to our plan. We know how to hurt them, we went all-out and everybody was fighting as a team. I think the spirit was high after we conceded three goals. From there, we started to give our all. But we have to start as we ended, in both halves.
“I think we have to learn from all these mistakes, we have to know when we have to go out strong, when we have to dominate from the beginning. It’s important in the Premier League to start winning from the beginning to be in the top. You have to start good and end well.”
In an ideal world, Thomas, that would be the case. This particular Arsenal team seem to run hot and cold on a regular basis without any rhyme or reason.
Hopefully now he is back, he can help us to be a bit more solid under pressure. I can but hope, eh!