After some good early promise, we lost 2-0 at home to Man City to kick off our 2018 Premier League season with a defeat.
Billionaire Champions Man City hadn’t strengthened their billion pound squad, and with World Cup stars on the bench and not being rushed back, it felt like a good time to play them, especially at home. It was our new Managers first league game in charge, but sadly it was the same old story as City’s strength in depth, even without some of their superstars, proved too much for us.
Most of our defenders heads were spinning with the pace and relentless ferocity of the Man City attack, and they were probably dreaming of a nice cold beer and a seat at their favourite Online Casino that evening.
After we’d looked fairly bright, and well organised Raheem Sterling put the visitors ahead early on, and as we looked to get back into the game, it felt like we might deserve an equaliser. However, it was Cech the busier of the two keepers, the Czech Cech keeping us in the game. Our defence looked ok, but couldn’t match the pace and guile of Aguero and co.
Raheem Sterling was lucky to still be on the pitch when he scored as he could have easily seen red on another day after a pretty cynical, studs-up challenge on our impressive debutant
Matteo Guendouzi in the early exchanges.
Guendouzi and Cech were definitely the highlights for Arsenal in decent first game of the season, and on another day we could have grabbed a point at least had we taken our chances.
Hector Bellerin had the best chance to get us back into the game opting to shoot rather than pass, and his shot was straight at the keeper. We also had two disallowed goals which again could have got us back into the game but sadly for Arsenal it wasn’t to be.
Another positive as Lacazette and Aubameyang looked very well suited, playing together after the Frenchman came on, Ramsey looked sluggish, while Ozil and Mkhitaryan also looked like they needed another week of training despite having plenty of pre-season exploits to get them back and fresher.
The games come thick and fast at this stage of the season, and we visit Stamford Bridge this weekend in another tough test for Emery as he continues the search for our first points of the season.
Our top few rivals all won, United beating Leicester 2-1 on Friday night, Sp*rs beating Newcastle by the same scoreline, while Liverpool looked very good against a poor West Ham side featuring Jack Wilshere, running out 4-0 winners at home. Chelsea beat Huddersfield 3-0 away while Everton drew with newly promoted Wolves.
Not a disastern by any means but not the best starts either, and hopefully the squad will be looking to put things right, starting this weekend away at Chelsea.
