Arsenal suffered a predictable and fairly dull defeat to Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday afternoon.
No one really expected anything other than a defeat this weekend, as City tried to bounce back from a shock against Newcastle and Arsenal travelled without a number of key defensive and midfield players thanks to injury. Still, that’s no excuse for how straightforward it all was for City.
The Gunners actually gave the hosts a pretty good first half, but a goal right before half-time killed the game, and both teams may as well have taken the remaining 45 minutes off.
Let’s have a look at our individual player ratings for the match.
1Goalkeeper and Defence
Bernd Leno 6
Leno was guilty of punching a couple of shots he perhaps could’ve caught, but that’s partly thanks to the fact he had to make such a ridiculously high number of saves. Despite conceding three goals, none of which he could’ve done much about, the German’s save tally was just one away from double figures.
Stephan Lichtsteiner 2
Lichtsteiner made one block from a cross to Sterling towards the end, which was pretty much the first time in the entire 90 minutes that he managed to stop the Englishman. All of City’s best chances came from Lichtsteiner’s side, and that was no coincidence. He was particularly guilty of switching off for the pivotal second goal for City.
It’s getting hard to justify keeping Lichtsteiner in the team over Carl Jenkinson, or Shkodran Mustafi playing out of position, or anyone.
Shkodran Mustafi 3
Mustafi messed up his defensive line for the first goal, and like Lichtsteiner he didn’t do much to stop the danger on the right-hand side.
Usually the German racks up the aerial duels and tackles and interception even in games where he performs poorly, so it was telling that he didn’t manage more than two in any of those stats. His passing was also average, he went off injured and he definitely could’ve given away a penalty for a rash tug on Aguero. A bad day all around.
Laurent Koscielny 6
Koscielny played pretty well in the circumstances. The defender scored Arsenal’s goal, which probably helped prevent the game becoming another embarrassing drubbing. He wasn’t terrible defensively either, unlike the rest of the back four.
Nacho Monreal 4.5
Monreal got forward well in the first half, as he usually does, and he made a couple of interceptions in good areas to get Arsenal back on the ball and counter-attacking.
In the defensive third, he looked very shaky though, with Manchester City getting in behind him almost as often as they did with Lichtsteiner. Plus, in the second half, he couldn’t progress the play forward as effectively.
Click ‘Next’ for Midfield, Forwards and Substitutes