Despite a lackluster performance against West Ham in our season opener, Arsene Wenger insists we weren’t over-confident, only unconvincing.

A 2-0 loss at home to West Ham is probably the last outcome many expected today. A team that’s supposed to be challenging for the Premier League title conceded two goals from a team that we should be beating with reasonable ease.

The signing that was supposed to prevent us from getting into these situations, Petr Cech, was even partially responsible for both goals.

You couldn’t write this stuff.

The hype surrounding this Arsenal squad, especially since signing Cech, may have gotten into our heads a bit today. We were slick and passed the ball around well at first, but were also incredibly naive and got caught out twice.

The boss insists this is nothing to do with over-confidence and was simply a bad performance.

“I felt we were a bit nervous – I don’t think we were too confident,” he said. “Our performance was not convincing, we gave two very cheap goals away and we were punished.”

Wenger also believes we should have bounced back after the first goal, but instead we crumbled further and looked devoid of options.

“I believe that we are maybe guilty at 0-0 to give them a goal as soft as that,” he continued. “We have enough experience at the back – look at our back line, the youngest is 30.”

Wenger explained, “I knew if the delivery was good we would be in trouble. The concentration was not there on the set-piece and we gave him (Kouyate) too much distance to run into.”

The boss proceeded to, quite rightly, rip into the team’s overall performance, saying, “Our passing was too slow, not incisive enough. We were not agile, not quick, and West Ham looked a bit sharper than us, more advanced in their preparation – they have played games in the Europa League.

“We were not good enough and West Ham played well. Congratulations to them.”