Arsenal suffered another damaging defeat at the hands of Leicester City on Sunday, thanks partly to a soft first-half red card, but not helped by a poor overall performance.

Unai Emery clearly had a gameplan to sit back and hit Leicester on the counter-attack, but the players weren’t able to execute on that. The Gunners’ counters were toothless and they didn’t look any more defensively solid despite all the men behind the ball.

Given that it clearly wasn’t working, tactical changes needed to be made, but by half-time it was already too late. Ainsley Maitland-Niles was sent off after picking up two yellow cards for his only two fouls in the match, and Arsenal never looked like winning after that.

Leicester made the breakthrough in the 59th minute through an impressive early cross and headed finish, before Jamie Vardy padded his stats a bit with two goals in the final five minutes.

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

Goalkeeper and Defence

Bernd Leno 7

Unlike in midweek, when Leno was very much at fault for the three goals Arsenal conceded, this time the Gunners had him to thank that the scoreline wasn’t much worse.

The German made nine saves and couldn’t have done anything about the first and third goal. Perhaps he could’ve come off his line a bit more quickly for the second, but he kept Arsenal in the game for as long as he could, the forwards just didn’t capitalise.

Ainsley Maitland-Niles 3

Maitland-Niles barely had an impact on the game for the opening half an hour, but his red card was the turning point from which Arsenal couldn’t return. The yellows were both harsh.

Shkodran Mustafi 3

Mustafi started decently, but it only took 15 minutes or so for him to be caught out by a ball in behind he expected the goalkeeper to come for. After that, he was as inconsistent as ever, making some good tackles and winning some aerial duels but making just as many silly fouls and positioning errors.

In the second half the centre-back played at right-back, and it would be unfair to judge him too harshly on that. It’s not his position.

Sokratis Papastathopoulos 2

Sokratis had a really poor game, failing to track runners and needing Koscielny and even Mustafi to bail him out on a few occasions. He didn’t make a tackle all match.

Sead Kolasinac 3.5

Kolasinac made the most tackles and interceptions of any Arsenal player, but he was still caught out of position a few times. In possession, his final ball was average at best.

Midfield

Lucas Torreira 4

Torreira pressed the Leicester players well, and he had a few good moments despite being on the end of a number of very physical challenges. He wasn’t particularly effective in Arsenal’s counter-attacking attempts though, and he lost possession as easily as everybody else in the team.

Granit Xhaka 4

Similar to Torreira, Xhaka had a few good moments breaking up play, but he was simply too ineffective in possession. Even his long balls, usually so effective, were very inaccurate on the day. Arsenal should have done better with a couple of good set-pieces from the midfielder though.

Alex Iwobi 3

Iwobi didn’t see as much of the ball as he would’ve liked, and he hit his one big chance straight at Kasper Schmeichel. The game certainly could have been a lot different had that gone in before the red card.

Henrikh Mkhitaryan 2

Mkhitaryan offered nothing to Arsenal, bar one interception and a couple of clearances. His passing was poor, his dribbling was poor, he didn’t win individual duels, create chances or take any of his own. He needed to come off earlier.

Strikers

Alexandre Lacazette 4

Lacazette did work hard, chased down a lot of last causes and actually had the highest pass accuracy of any starter. However, he didn’t threaten Leicester’s goal at any point, whether by a shot of his own or creating a chance for a teammate.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang 4

Aubameyang was the only player on the Arsenal team to create more than one chance throughout the 90 minutes. The problem was that he didn’t have any to take himself. Like Lacazette, the striker’s work rate was very good, especially after Arsenal went down to 10 men. It just wasn’t enough.

Substitutes

Laurent Koscielny 3

As mentioned previously, Koscielny did bail out Sokratis on a couple of occasions, but he also played some surprisingly lazy passes and let more players dribble past him than he stopped with a tackle. He was also caught just under the ball once again for Leicester’s first goal, a frustratingly common occurrence in his play.

Matteo Guendouzi 4

Bringing on Guendouzi for Mkhitaryan was a bit of a bizarre decision. Mkhitaryan certainly needed to come off, but it wasn’t as if Arsenal were really lacking defensive-minded midfielders. The Frenchman completed a few passes and unsurprisingly didn’t provide the goal Arsenal needed.

Eddie Nketiah 4

In his 11 minutes on the pitch with Arsenal pretty much resigned to their fate, this wasn’t exactly the best environment for Nketiah to prove himself. He had one big opportunity that required a top tackle from Harry Maguire, but in fairness, the teenager was offside anyway.

The young striker’s passes all found their targets and he did win Arsenal a late corner, but it still wasn’t the impact he’d have hoped to have.