WOLVES SHOW THE REST HOW TO DEAL WITH CHAMPIONS CITY
Arsenal claim first win but are still a work in progress under new boss as pointless Hammers push them all way
MAYBE the Unai Emery era starts here. At least there are points on the board, a home victory and a degree of momentum, now that the problematic early fixtures of Manchester City and Chelsea are behind them.
And there was no Mesut Ozil. He was ill with a cold but maybe that was also a hint of the future. Emery publicly asked him for more, after the opening- day defeat against Manchester City. He did so again at training in a more private situation on Thursday. We will never know for sure whether Ozil would have started yesterday.
What we do know is that he isn’t a natural fit for what Emery wants in terms of defensive work from his No 10. And that Aaron Ramsey, another of whom Emery has demanded more, did the job effectively yesterday. And that by the end the Emirates reverberated with applause and satisfaction.
That only told part of the story. If a team like this West Ham side, bottom of the table with no points, can create numerous chances against you and stay in the game until the final minute, it would suggest that the Arsenal reboot will take some time.
There is still so much work to do for Emery. He will need to start with the right- hand side. Once again, as at Chelsea, Hector Bellerin and Henrikh Mkhitaryan were the principal attacking threat and good enough too. Indeed, Arsenal’s opening and final goals came from that source. But so did West Ham’s after 25 minutes.
It is a conundrum that Emery acknowledged. His team have great attacking impetus; they also look wide open at the back. ‘We needed a win today and to show the supporters a match with three points,’ he said. ‘But it’s clear we need to improve and not to concede as many chances as we did today.
‘What is the reason tactically that we conceded (those chances)? That is for analysis. It’s clear today in the first half we want to use to the right back or left back in attacking moments but we need balance with the midfielders. In the first half we conceded a lot of options. But the first goal is Hector’s action and Nacho Monreal’s finishing.
‘But we didn’t have the balance in transition and we suffered. We need balance but not to lose our attacking moments. The first half and second half were very different and we found that balance.’
Indeed, there was much to sort out at half-time. So much so that West Ham manager Manuel Pellegrini could justifiably claim some positives.
‘I’m not happy with the result but am happy with the performance,’ he said.
‘It was what I demanded of the players: to come here against a big team and to play as a big team and think as a big team.
‘We are in the correct way and soon this team will win more games than it will lose. We need to add points but i n every game we improve a little bit more. Today the result has nothing to do with the 90 minutes.’
Principally he could be happy with record £ 41million signing Felipe Anderson. Had Lucas Perez s h o w n mo r e c o mp o s u r e on 84 minutes or had Andriy Yarmolenko had more anticipation in reading his pin-point cross on 90 minutes, West Ham might have left here with a point. Anderson was a constant thorn in Arsenal’s side, exposing the wide open gaps left by their high line and lax back four.
So on 25 minu t e s , We s t Ham won the ball back and mo v e d it to Anders on . There were no covering holding midfielders, no winger tracking back, just huge open s pace. Anderson s i mply a dvanced, fed Marko Arnautovic who nutmegged Shkodran Mustafi as he r et urned t he pass. Anderson shrugged off Bellerin and teed up Arnautovic, who fired home from the edge of the box. But the Mkhitaryan-Bellerin combination works well in attack. On 30 minutes the Catalan’s well-struck cross squeezed in-between Lukasz Fabianski and Pierre- Emerick Aubameyang, so close that you felt t h e g o a l k e e p e r mi g h t h a v e deflected it away. He didn’t and the ball ended at the feet of Monreal, who struck i t h o me for 1-1. That did not, however, kick-start the Emery revolution. Bellerin let in Anderson on 35 minutes; Michail Antonio went close on 40 minutes; Robert Snodgrass had to score on 45 minuets but shot tamely at Petr Cech. And Granit Xhaka, with a wild challenge on Snodgrass just before half-time, was fortunate to stay on the pitch. He didn’t even receive a yellow card. However, another subplot was developing. Issa Diop, We s t H a m ’s £23m signing from Toulouse,
was making his debut and completely ill at ease, consistently bullied and tricked by Aubameyang.
On one such occasion he earned a yellow card for a kick so high on the knee it might have been a red.
Arsenal improved considerably with another decisive half- time substitution, Alexandre Lacazette on for Alex Iwobi, with the Frenchman denied by Fabianski on 56 minutes.
But Diop’s horror-moment came on 70 minutes. First, he sliced a horrible clearance high into the air allowing Ramsey to head it back into the box.
Then, as Lacazette battled and got a cross in, he deflected the ball into his own net.
For a 10- minute spell, Arsenal looked formidable — or was it that West Ham were inept? — with Fabianski saving from Aubameyang on 71 minutes and then from Ramsey on 83 minutes. And yet those Anderson breaks remained a threat.
As it was, West Ham allowed Arsenal all the space they needed in injury-time, Mkhitaryan again feeding Bellerin whose cross found substitute Danny W el beck, embarrassingly unmarked, to turn in for 3-1.