Arsenal were not at their best yesterday but the Gunners did come through a tough game after a difficult week with all three points and in order top do so we needed some strong performances from the likes of Cech, Coquelin, Mustafi, Koscielny and Gibbs. Another player who stood out was the Ox who is looking good in his new central role but for his two goals on top of another invaluable effort I have to give Alexis Sanchez my vote for our Man of the Match.
Cech 8 – Didn’t put a foot wrong and made some excellent and vital saves.
Bellerin 7 – Should have scored and was not in full flow but decent game.
Mustafi 8 – Stood up to concerted pressure, won all his tackles, played very well.
Koscielny 8 – Key tackles and interceptions. Clean sheet was vital.
Gibbs 7 – Got away with last man tackle. Good all round impact in defence and attack.
Coquelin 8 – Strong, tenacious and effective.
Chamberlain 8.5 – Passed well both long and short. Direct and dangerous, Deserves more games in centre.
Ozil 5 – Needs to up his game and quickly.
Walcott 6 – Good spirit and effort but little impact.
Iwobi 7 – Too easily beaten by Markovic but generally okay performance.
Alexis 9 – Thank god Arsenal have this pocket dynamo and top EPL scorer.
subs:
Elneny 7 – Did not miss a single pass. Effort and energy helped to stop determined Hull fightback.
Lucas Perez 6 – Looked sharp in his short time.
Welbeck 5 – Not much time but didn’t get into game and almost cost us with dodgy defending.
Bob.
ratings are too high imo especially gibbs mustafi and coquelin.
sanchez does not deserve a 9 because it was not a perfect performance.Somehow handball counted as a goal.
Ozil is the world’s most overrated player and would not start for any top 6 team.
The two goals really flattered Sanchez’s performance. One was a handball, the other a penalty. Ridiculously high ratings.
I have to agree. He got caught in possession a lot, and gave the ball the ball away on numerous occasions. Those goals saved his performance.
I’m sure if Costa done that he’d be described as a winner because of it. It’d be said that they all count, and that’s the difference with Arsenal, Arsenal trying to walk it in with perfect goal. Commentators gave Alexis man of the match, his efforts all round and trying to spark his teammates into action.
Ratings are always on the generous side. Arsenal were poor, and got very lucky on more than one occasion.
I strongly have to disagree with the rating for Gibbs. “Good all round impact in defence and attack”, is not what I saw. Markovic caused problems down that flank almost the entire game, although as I said in my comment yesterday, Gibbs being caught out of position a lot is more to do with Wenger’s tactics. He was good going forward, but not defensively. In regards to his challenge on Markovic: it was a blatant red card, a professional foul (Gibbs didn’t even go for the ball), last man, and Markovic was heading straight down the middle, not away from goal. Cannot believe the ref gave a yellow for that.
A rating of 5, at best, would have been more appropriate for Gibbs.
Although the ref had a very poor game, he gets my MOTM, because I don’t think we would have won without him.
Yes Gibbs should be sent off, but it was a difficult situation, if you want to blame, blame our 2 CBs.
It was a difficult choice for Gibbs, either take him down and risk a red card or let him go through one on one with our GK and risk our 1 goal lead. Also the timing was difficult too… this incident happened on the 55th minutes of the game, not early and not too late…
Our CB should have cleared the situation in the first place.
I thought defensively most of our players performed much better, they deserve extra points/ratings when this is the case. Our forward play not as sharp as can be, but definitely enough to win this game. Some players are never gonna put in the shift that you’d want or expect of them.
Got my first look at this next Henry dude. My word their are similarities, weirdest of all is he’s playing in the same team that the next Vieira is playing in. Sign them up. He even uses his side foot mostly when shooting, as Henry tended to do. He also looks to have that very strong upper body that Henry had, and then very quick strong legs. So he has a similar look. Wenger should not have alerted everyone that he himself sees similarities with an Henry of all players. What chance have we got now of snapping him up, Wenger should have used his French contacts and tried to do this quietly. The boy at Celtic looks like a goalscorer, half a million was some shrewd piece of business by the fabulous Celts. I want the next Henry though, and bring along Bakayoko for good measure ..I smell an Invincible season.
OT.
Rio Ferdinand, a former Manchester United centre back whitewashing Arsenal as a team lacking the PL title winning mentality for the past ten years is unacceptable as his comment courtesy of Espnfc has amounted to castigating Arsenal’s teams of the last ten years as failed teams.
Nonetheless, I want the current PL & UCL playing team at Arsenal to take this Rio Ferdinand’s castigation of our past ten years teams as failed teams as a wakeup challenge to spur them to titles winning actions this season in their remaining PL & UCL games by winning all their remaining games in the two competitions to capture the two titles this season to show Rio Ferdinand that this current Arsenal team has refused to be counted among the last Arsenal’s ten years failed teams. News emanating from Turf Moor so far after 66 minutes into the game between Burnley FC and Chelsea shows the game is stalemating at 1-1. If the final result remained this way or improved to Burnley’s favour, such dropped points by Chelsea can only be to the overall benefit of Arsenal to become the Champions of this season’s PL campaign.
You brought up an interesting point there mate. I remember when someone from our team would talk before a match but end up giving the other team something to feel ticked off about. You’d even hear afterward that they used that as an incentive to push harder against us. A bit like how Conte told his players to remember how the Emirates game felt, and use that. If we were the type of team that hangs newspaper clippings on the wall when rivals start spouting off about how weak we are, we would have better ammunition than we ever gave out. Some of our players, as well as manager, do put their foot in it at times with the worst possible timing. However, it wouldn’t compare in the slightest to what can be said and written about us. I don’t understand how our captain never kept any of this stuff and pinned it to the wall on match-days.
i would give giroud a 10, he was in perfect position the who match on the bench
OX my MOTM.
Gibbs had a nightmare of a game. Coquelin wasn’t far away. Mustafi and Kosc weren’t great either. Ozil was once again MIA. And Sanchez should be lucky with 2 goals because one was a handball, and another PK which could’ve been easily saved. Ox was pretty solid, and I thought Perez deserved more than 6 for his cameo appearance. But my MOTM goes to Cech. If it wasn’t for his couple of vital saves, we’d drop points again.
Ozil should have scored, but he was not MIA this game.
ratings are too high. Arsenal didnt play well at all. another day the first goal was disallowed and Gibbs could get dismissed, a draw at best and you would rate them 3 to 5 for exactly same performance
Iwobi and Ozil made too many mistakes Walcott almost useless
I agree with others, Ox was Motm