Arsenal: Harsh reality bites as transfer failure and injuries catch up with blunt Gunners | OneFootball

Mikel Arteta gets Mikel Merino reality check as West Ham defeat dents Arsenal title hopes

Your matchday briefing on Arsenal, featuring team news and expert analysis from Simon Collings

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While Myles Lewis-Skelly was sent off in the second half just 17 minutes after coming on, in truth this was a 1-0 defeat born of Arsenal’s problems at the other end of the pitch.

Eyes were fixed firmly on Mikel Merino and how he would fare up front, in the absence of a fit striker. He was the two-goal saviour off the bench against Leicester last week, and Arteta felt that audition was enough to earn him the chance to lead the line from the start.

With Mikel Merino leading the line, Arsenal never really looked like scoring against West Ham

Arsenal FC via Getty Images

Merino did the basics well, but he and the Arsenal attack was so hopelessly blunt. The brutal reality: they never once looked like scoring.

West Ham, just as they did last season, arrived unfancied at the Emirates and left with all three points.

This, so very worryingly for Arteta, is the blueprint for how matches may well look until Gabriel Martinelli and Bukayo Saka return from injury.

One wonders whether the title race will be over by the time the duo are back.

The disappointment around the Emirates was understandable, but the decision of referee Craig Pawson - after a look at the VAR monitor - to upgrade Lewis-Skelly’s yellow card to Arsenal’s fifth red of the Premier League season was no almighty disgrace.

The 18-year-old knew what he was doing as he stopped Mohammed Kudus breaking away.

While William Saliba was also behind the halfway line when Lewis-Skelly lunged in, he was nowhere near the action, really, and would have been powerless to prevent Kudus and the onrushing Jarrod Bowen scoring his second goal of the afternoon. A red card that made Arsenal’s afternoon, and their pursuit of Liverpool, so much harder.

As can happen when you’ve got hardly any fit attackers and a central midfielder up front, for all their possession Arsenal looked so blunt in the final third throughout.

At the other end, West Ham also created little, but the warning signs were there in the first half when Bowen struck wide and Tomas Soucek headed over on three separate chances. All three chances were defended lackadaisically.

That paved the way for the game’s only goal in the 44th minute, when Bowen started and finished a West Ham counter-attack which Arsenal seemed to simply stand and watch as it unfolded.

Bowen spread wide to Aaron Wan-Bissaka, the right wing-back crossing pass a half-hearted attempt to block by Riccardo Calafiori, over Gabriel and Declan Rice, and into the path of Bowen for a simple header. West Ham had run right through Arsenal.

Though Martin Odegaard and Leandro Trossard shot on goal and tried to make inroads into the West Ham box, the Gunners lacked ruthlessness in the final third.

The closest they came to scoring was when the returning Ben White, off the bench, whistled wide of the post by mere centimetres in stoppage time. Still no.

The weeks ahead will dictate how significant this home defeat proves to be, but those of a Liverpool persuasion watching on will not have been panicking.