Arsenal suffered a poor 2-1 defeat to Östersunds FK on Thursday night, which was disappointing despite the aggregate result putting the club in the next round.
Östersund raced into a 2-0 lead in the first half, and almost looked like they might overturn their 3-0 home defeat in Sweden. Fortunately, Sead Kolašinac killed off the tie with an early second half goal.
Arsenal progress to the round of 16, but individually there were a lot of poor performances.
Here are our player ratings:
2Midfield
Ainsley Maitland-Niles 2.5
We’ve all waited a very long time to see Maitland-Niles in midfield, but we might have to wait a lot longer for his next appearance there. The youngster’s passing was decent enough, but he provided no cover for the defence, and his sole defensive contribution was to foul an Östersund player to prevent a counter attack.
In the end, Wenger had to sacrifice the 20-year-old so Granit Xhaka could come on and secure the result.
Mohamed Elneny 3.5
Elneny showed a lot of energy, and seemed a lot less nervous than the rest of the team when things started to go wrong. Like Maitland-Niles though, he didn’t provide enough defensive cover when the team needed it.
Jack Wilshere 2.5
One of Wilshere’s worst performances of the season, but also a very lazy showing. The moment that stood out for me was when Bellerin gestured for him to come close and provide an option to play out from the back, and the 26-year-old just pointed at other players to do it instead.
“…a chance for him to prove himself,
but he couldn’t take advantage…”
Forwards next