Francis Coquelin has described our defeat to West Ham as a wake up call for the team and doesn’t believe our performance against the Hammers was truly Arsenal.

The defensive midfielder, who starred in the 2-0 loss, reckons we can learn from it and come back stronger. He also said we need to put more effort in and not take games for granted.

“It’s been a wake-up call for everyone,” he said. “Considering the recent results we had before that, going really well in pre-season, it’s disappointing and it was not an Arsenal performance.”

He continued, “However, in bad things, good things can come out too. It’s good that it happened in the first game so that now we can pull ourselves together with 37 games left. We’ve got time to put things right and that needs to start on Sunday.

“Everybody realises that we need to put more in. When you look at different teams I think a lot of them are ready. You look at Manchester City when they played against West Brom, I think they played really good football.”

Although it’s great that the Frenchman believes we can come back from the loss, it’s difficult to get excited when our next match is against Crystal Palace away. Palace have a fantastic record under Alan Pardew, especially at home, and I’m not at all confident going into this match.

“We need to pull ourselves together and it’s going to be a real test on Sunday because Crystal Palace have a really good squad,” Coquelin said. “We know the quality we have and we need to respond straight away. We’ve been working really hard in training and we need to put all of the training effort into the game.”

I’ve become skeptical. All our pre-season talk about starting the season strongly and being motivated seems a little weak now. In all honesty, the best talking the team can do now is on the pitch. Prove to us that you are capable.