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.
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.