Arsenal were embarrassed by a dominant first-half performance by Wolves in their Premier League clash on Wednesday night, and Unai Emery’s side ended up losing the match 3-1.

With Manchester United facing Manchester City and Chelsea dropping points against Burnley, Arsenal had the opportunity to push ahead of both of their top four rivals with a win over Wolves. It didn’t take long for that dream to die though, with a Ruben Neves free-kick, a Matt Doherty header and a Diogo Jota third making it 3-0 by half-time.

Arsenal didn’t really improve much in the second half, Wolves just stopped attacking as often. Late on, Sokratis Papastathopoulos almost sparked a comeback by heading in a Granit Xhaka corner, but a couple of missed chances in the following minutes ensured it wasn’t to be.

Let’s have a look at our individual player ratings for the match.

Goalkeeper and Defence

Bernd Leno 2

This was possibly Leno’s worst match in an Arsenal shirt so far. There wasn’t very much he could do about the opening goal, but he could’ve been a lot more commanding coming out for the second. That goal was also just moments after the goalkeeper almost palmed a save into his own net, with the woodwork bailing him out.

Then, just before half time, Leno let a shot go right under his body for Wolves’ third. He probably could’ve made the stop with his foot, the ball was that close to him.

Ainsley Maitland-Niles 3

Maitland-Niles looked nowhere near as confident playing as a full-back as he has at wing-back recently. He made a couple of good recovery tackles, but only after being caught out of position in the first place. He was also caught in possession too often and didn’t create anything offensively.

Sokratis Papastathopoulos 5

Sokratis was far from perfect, but he performed a lot better than the rest of the defence. He won more aerial duels than the other three combined, added a couple of clearances and tackles on top of that and scored Arsenal’s only goal of the game. Still, he was just as much a part of the defensive line that kept being caught out on set pieces.

Laurent Koscielny 3

It’s hard to remember a Koscielny performance as poor as this since his first game back against Southampton. He didn’t make any tackles or clearances, with just one interception and two aerials as the sum of his defensive efforts.

Nacho Monreal 3.5

Monreal gave away the vital free-kick for the opening goal, and though Ruben Neves moved the ball away from the actual foul to take it from a better position, it was still in a very dangerous area already. The one positive is that Monreal’s passing was at least pretty good, and he was one of just four Arsenal starters to create a chance.

Midfield

Lucas Torreira 3

Torreira’s performance was about as ineffective as Mohamed Elneny’s at the weekend. He made one interception, but that was it for his defensive actions. He didn’t create any chances, he had less than half as much possession as Xhaka and none of his shots were on target.

Granit Xhaka 4

The most talked about element of Xhaka’s performance will be when he gave away possession for Wolves to score their third, and rightly so. It was a damaging moment for Arsenal and killed any realistic hopes of a comeback before half-time.

No one wants to hear this, but Xhaka’s performance was otherwise fairly solid. He created more chances than any other Arsenal player, assisting the only goal, and he was the only midfielder or forward to make any tackles, including the substitutes. He also won as many aerials as all of those players combined. Still, his error ruined all that.

Mesut Özil 3

Özil created a couple of chances, but Wolves walked all over him for most of the match. He won one out of the 10 individual duels he contested, getting dispossessed a grand total of six times. The German had the ball enough (only Xhaka and Monreal saw more of it), he just couldn’t make anything of his possession.

Forwards

Henrikh Mkhitaryan 2

Mkhitaryan and Iwobi didn’t create one chance in 58 minutes and 71 minutes respectively. Nor did they have a single shot on target between them. They were both dribbled past more than they completed dribbles and neither of them offered anything at all defensively.

Alex Iwobi 2

As above, except Iwobi’s pass accuracy was also the lowest of any of Arsenal’s midfielders and forwards.

Alex Lacazette 4

At 1-0 down, Lacazette had his best moment and his worst moment rolled up into one. He beat a couple of Wolves players to get free in the box for a shot, then fired that shot fantastically high and wide.

The striker couldn’t get involved as much as he would’ve wanted, but did win most of his duels and create a couple of chances. He just never looked like scoring.

Substitutes

Sead Kolasinac 4

The double introduction of Kolasinac and Guendouzi didn’t really change anything. Kolasinac was no more involved in creating than Mkhitaryan had been, though his one defensive aerial was one more defensive action than the Armenian managed.

Matteo Guendouzi 4

Similarly, Guendouzi’s introduction didn’t really add anything that Torreira wasn’t already providing. He attempted a couple more long balls but nothing that actually came off.

Eddie Nketiah 7

Nketiah was Arsenal’s best performer on the night by far. Just minutes after coming on he turned Willy Boly excellently, got his head up and found Lacazette, whose shot was blocked. The youngster won all three of his individual duels and earned a dangerous free-kick with his other attempted dribble.

The striker also saw one weak-foot shot blocked, and completed all of his attempted passes. In just 19 minutes Nketiah did what Mkhitaryan and Iwobi had failed to do for the rest of the match.