Arsenal were left dumbfounded after West Ham managed to score two goals against us on Sunday and Per Mertesacker admits he’s especially disappointed with conceding a set-piece.

The first goal was from a set-piece which should have been defended better, both by our outfield players and our new goalkeeper. The second goal should have been cleared sooner and definitely should have been saved by an out-of-position Petr Cech.

The BFG believes the goals simply happened at the right time (or wrong time, if you’re an Arsenal player) and that the team can only blame themselves for not coming back when they were only one goal down in the first half.

“They score at the right times – shortly before half-time from a set-piece,” said the defender. “That was very disappointing. We worked a lot on that, not to concede. But I think they deserved it in the end, because especially in the second half, they just defended very deep and we didn’t find any solutions. Sometimes it’s good to come back from a massive loss. I think we are capable of coming back.”

The centre-back believes our confidence was high until this point and hopes that we can bounce back soon. He reckons there’s a lot of work to be done in training, which poses the question: what were they doing in pre-season?

“The first half was ok, not decisive enough, especially not in the final third,” the BFG continued, “We can only blame ourselves for today’s game. Hopefully we can come back from that disappointment. The confidence was high, everyone felt great but we had a couple of misunderstandings, especially in the first half. We lost the ball a lot, we were not patient enough at times, so there is a lot to work on. We have to work more.”

Before adding, “[Bouncing back] is very important. We want to have a better start than last season so we need to be very cautious of the situation. To start with a game like that is not good but to bounce back is even more important now.”