Arsenal let a 2-2 draw slip in the late stages on Saturday, falling to a one-goal defeat against Chelsea after a spirited fight back from 2-0 down.
After having to start the season against Premier League champions Manchester City, Arsenal moved on to one of their worst away grounds in recent years, Stamford Bridge.
For half an hour it looked like Chelsea might give the Gunners a battering, going 2-0 up and threatening constantly. Then Arsenal made a large number of fantastic chances, took two of them, and went in at half-time on level terms.
After that, only Chelsea seemed to come out with any intent to win in the second half. Eventually they got a late goal through Marcos Alonso, and saw out the final 10 minutes without trouble.
Here are our individual player ratings for the match:
1Defence
Petr Cech 7
Cech made some very good saves to keep Arsenal in the game, but only after the team went 2-0 down. There’s not much he could’ve done about the goals, in fairness.
Cech also still didn’t look confident playing out from the back, though that’s likely just as much on the central defenders as it is on him. Overall he kept the Gunners in the game though.
Nacho Monreal 6
Monreal reminded us what we were missing without his forward runs, as he caused Chelsea a lot of problems along with Alex Iwobi on the left hand side. Defensively he wasn’t quite as solid, but ultimately the fact that all the goals came through the middle or from the opposite flank suggests he did enough.
Sokratis Papastathopoulos 5
Sokratis fought well, but just wasn’t good enough in a positional sense. He lost Pedro for the first goal, and couldn’t get back in time to help Mustafi for the second after the team was caught out by Chelsea runners again.
Shkodran Mustafi 5.5
Mustafi’s best work came on the ball, with a couple of nice forward passes setting up Arsenal attacks. Like Sokratis, he didn’t do well enough for the goals though, letting Morata turn him, and not being aware of Alonso’s position in the box.
Hector Bellerin 6.5
Bellerin was very good in attack, and his clever cutback for Aubameyang would’ve been an assist in any other game this season. This was just a rare game where the striker couldn’t finish the easy chances.
However, two of the goals came down Bellerin’s side defensively, as Chelsea took advantage of the Spaniard’s forays forward. In fairness, Henrikh Mkhitaryan or Alexandre Lacazette should take more of the blame than Bellerin on each occasion.