Arsenal managed to grind out their first win under Unai Emery on Saturday, coming from behind to win 3-1 against West Ham United.

It wasn’t Arsenal’s most convincing performance overall, with periods of the match where they looked vulnerable, and a sense they were missing chief creator Mesut Özil. Nonetheless, the result was all that really mattered on this occasion, after defeats to Chelsea and Manchester City.

Let’s have a look at the individual ratings for each player:

1Goalkeeper and Defence

Petr Cech 7

Cech had to be alert on a number of occasions to keep West Ham from scoring more than the one goal they did manage. There wasn’t much the goalkeeper could do about Arnautovic’s well-placed shot through the defender’s legs.

The 36-year-old still doesn’t look entirely comfortable playing out from the back, but he did complete 83% of his passes, which is a good effort.

Nacho Monreal 8

Monreal was Arsenal’s hero again, scoring the equaliser and winning the vast majority of his duels at both ends. Still, he was caught out too far forward once or twice, and needs to co-ordinate with Bellerin a bit better so only one of them advances at a time. On this occasion though, it didn’t matter.

Sokratis Papastathopoulos 7.5

Sokratis had to make a couple of last ditch tackles and blocks, as a result of the fact that he was left so exposed for most of the match. The former Dortmund man is impressing fans after a slow start in pre-season, and is making a better case to keep his place on Koscielny’s return than his centre-back partner is right now.

Shkodran Mustafi 6.5

Undeniably, Mustafi needs someone to cover him a bit more. Hopefully when Torreira is starting more regularly he’ll have that. Even so, the defender was still caught out much too often, and getting nutmegged and then losing his man for the goal wasn’t a good look.

It wasn’t all bad though, and Mustafi did manage a massive 14 clearances, three more than the rest of the team combined.

Hector Bellerin 8

Just like Monreal, Bellerin was great going forward. Only his assist for Welbeck will go down in the record books, but the first goal was chiefly down to his cross as well. He also suffered from the same problem as Monreal at the back though. As mentioned, they can’t keep both going forward for every attack. It leaves Arsenal too open.

Back