ALEX’S RED VALENTINE’S DAY CARD

THE Valentine’s Day card for Alexandre Lacazette was not what boss Unai Emery had in mind.

The France striker was shown a straight red for elbowing Aleksandar Filipovic in the face in a moment of madness as Arsenal (below) slumped to an embarrassing defeat.

Stanislav Dragun’s first-half header proved the winner for BATE, who had lost all three of their previous home games against English teams in Europe.

But a dreadful performance from Arsenal was completed when Lacazette got his marching orders five minutes from time. The Gunners had 77 per cent possession and peppered Borisov with 16 shots, but only three were on target.

Arsenal should be good enough to turn this around in the second leg on February 21, but it is now four defeats in their last seven games in all competitions for Emery’s strugglers. It was a bad night for the under-fire Gunners boss, who was slaughtered on social media for taking off Sead Kolasinac, Arsenal’s best player.

Arsenal wiped the floor with BATE in last season’s Europa League, beating them 4-2 here and 6-0 at the Emirates and they actually started this one well too.

So it was a surprise when the home side took the lead. Dragun buried his header past Petr Cech from Igor Stasevich’s free kick on the stroke of half-time.

Lacazette had the ball in the net 10 minutes into the second half, but was rightly judged offside. And his night was only about to get worse.

GIVEN THE ELBOW Lacazette catches defender Filipovic with a flailing arm.. and gets a red card