The big winners and losers as Arsenal beat West Ham to give Emery his first PL victory

In an exciting match at the Emirates, Arsenal came from behind to beat West Ham 3-1.

This was Arsenal’s first win and first points of the Premier League season and the manner of it will be seen as an announcement that the Gunners are now finally properly moving into a post-Wenger era. Who were the winners and losers?

Winner: Alexandre Lacazette

Arsenal were drawing 1-1 at home to West Ham. That in itself isn’t disastrous but coming after two defeats in their opening two games, it was a terrible situation for the Gunners to be in. Unai Emery knew he had to act, and so at half-time Alexandre Lacazette came on and immediately went up-front.

This change transformed Arsenal. With Lacazette as the lead striker, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang dropped further back and suddenly found much more space and freedom than he did when he was the most advanced forward. The quality of Arsenal’s play improved, as Auba and Aaron Ramsey thrived now they had a reference to play off.

And it was Lacazette’s slick movement and smart passing that saw Arsenal take the lead, as his movement and strength saw him control a loose ball and his zipped cutback flew in off the stomach of Issa Diop, giving the Gunners an advantage they never surrendered and their first points of the season. One suspects he will start the next game!

Loser: West Ham’s medics

With West Ham drawing 1-1 with Arsenal but still being within a shout of picking up an equaliser. Then they lost star striker Marko Arnautovic to a knee problem. The Austrian tried to battle on but had to limp from the field just short of the hour.

To compound their misery, minutes later Michail Antonio also left the pitch with an injury. Losing two game-changing attackers is bad enough for any club, but when you’re West Ham and you’ve not won a game all season and those are two of your three game-changing attackers then it’s pretty damn disastrous.

Winner: Felipe Anderson

When Felipe Anderson signed for West Ham, many people wondered why. After all this is a player who had been linked with the likes of Manchester United and now here he was turning up at The London Stadium, what gives? Did he move for the money? Was he less impressive than rumoured? Could he handle the Premier League’s intensity?

Who knows. No. Yes.

Felipe Anderson was West Ham’s best player against the Gunners, often operating as a one-man counter-attack. The Brazilian would pick up the ball with his side firmly in the defensive phase and carry the ball into the attack to conjure chances. This is how West Ham’s goal came about as Felipe Anderson carried the ball fully 40+ yards before exchanging passes with Arnautovic, teeing the Austrian up to strike.

Anderson carried on creating chances in transition all afternoon long; even playing the ball across the face of goal for Yarmolenko to fail to tap home an equaliser in the dying minutes of the game. Anderson can be huge for West Ham, all he needs is one other attacker on his level.

Loser: Marko Arnautovic

Yes, Arnautovic scored West Ham’s only goal with a superb strike, contorting his body around the ball and smashing it low past Petr Cech to give his side the lead; but he’s still a loser overall because he should have bagged a hat-trick and secured West Ham a massive win to kick-start their season.

Instead, Arnautovic faded badly after his goal and never actually took his chances with the same conviction he did that 25th minute strike. Both of his misses saw him given space to take aim at Cech, but on both occasions he failed to take advantage. A knee injury in the second half ended his afternoon prematurely, and he will hope it’s nothing too serious.

Winner: Unai Emery

Finally, Unai Emery gets a win as Arsenal boss! The Spaniard has endured a tough start to his time as Gunners boss with two very tricky fixtures to start things off, but this was the first game where you thought “yeah, they’ll win this.” Except for the longest time that didn’t look like happening.

The match had all the hallmarks of traditional early season Emery: his side didn’t seem to be fully in-sync with his style of play, there were massive problems with the transition defence and he wasn’t giving his best striker enough minutes.

Then at half-time Emery brought Lacazette on and so much changed; alright they were still ropey defensively, but they now had punch in attack. Then Danny Welbeck came on too. Both men bagged the goals that sealed the deal and Hector Bellerin, much maligned for his defensive weakness, was a key offensive component of Arsenal’s turnaround.

Have patience, Unai Emery knows what he’s doing.

Loser: Manuel Pellegrini

Alright, you can say he’s unlucky to lose two key players to injury and for the game-turning goal to be an own-goal which his defender could do little about. But the fact is Manuel Pellegrini just lost his third straight game as West Ham boss, and that means the Hammers have now started the season with a trio of consecutive defeats for the first time since 2010.

West Ham did considerable business in the summer so you’d expect them to improve the more time they’ve had to gel, but by goodness it’s been pretty objectionable so far, hasn’t it? What exactly could Pellegrini do to turn this around? It’s not an immediately obvious personnel change, but something has to be done because West Ham… yikes.

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