Match report – By the numbers – Player ratings – Video

If the opening day defeat to Aston Villa in 2013 was met with an explosion of fury, it also came with a big dose of ‘Told you so!’ to it. The club’s stasis in the transfer market was seen as the reason for the loss. In hindsight, it had more to do with a poor performance, a really crap referee, and some bad luck – the team that day should have been able to win. Of course having better players would have helped, but in itself it wasn’t the main driver of the result that day.

It’s why yesterday’s loss to West Ham feels worse than that to me. The Villa stuff was like surreal slapstick, a kind of footballing pantomime with the club the ‘tache-twirling villain. We weren’t ready, we paid the price, now we’ll make ourselves heard. The thing about yesterday though is we were ready … well, we should have been.

The squad was settled, confident after a decent pre-season, not really lacking in any areas, and this time around there was expectation. Expectation of a win yesterday, expectation that it would be the first win in a season in which we challenge for the Premier League title, expectation that we were ready to build on the two FA Cup wins and kick on.

Instead, as the manager said, ‘we killed ourselves’. Afterwards he spoke about his team being ‘nervous’. I don’t buy that at all. I don’t think there was over-confidence or arrogance as some have suggested. My theory is quite simple: we played badly, got punished for silly mistakes, and that’s the difference between pre-season and the Premier League.

Credit to West Ham, who played well, but that they’re slightly more advanced in their fitness wasn’t the difference between the teams. We had more of the ball, created more ‘chances,’ (although few of them were anything close to clear cut), took more shots, but all the stuff that was good about pre-season – like cohesion and the team functioning as a group rather than individuals trying too hard – was nowhere to be seen.

I’ve seen Olivier Giroud take some stick for his performance, but the question I’d ask is why, on at least three occasions, was our centre-forward the man running down the left wing looking to get crosses in? To who, exactly? Why was Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain the only player who looked genuinely up for it – bearing in mind ‘it’ and ‘up for’ are a bit abstract?

The boss pointed at two areas that let us down:

On the two aspects of our game, going forward and defending … our performance was not convincing.

Which is a bit like a coroner saying the dead body had problems with staying upright and breathing. In particular though, the defending was poor, and Petr Cech in goal had a debut to forget. The circumstances – in that it was his first game – mean the criticism is more measured, but had it been Szczesny or Ospina playing like that the pitchforks would be well and truly out this morning.

For the first the poorly organised defensive line for the free kick was compounded by his decision to come for the ball. It looks worse for him, of course, but when Wenger said afterwards, “I knew that if the delivery was good, we would be in trouble before the free-kick was taken”, it was easy to to see what he was talking about.

The defensive line was too high, players were all over the place positionally, Kouyate was allowed a free run into that dangerous space, and Cech, perhaps wanting to be decisive and commanding on his debut, made the wrong decision. Split second stuff, still, it’s 1-0, you have the whole of the second half to score, and score again, so not a fatal blow by any means.

The second half saw Giroud hit the side netting and we looked like we might be building some momentum, when they got a second. Again fingers will be pointed at Cech, wrong-footed at his near post by Zarate’s shot, but there are more fingers to go around. Koscielny and Cazorla, standing watching and not closing down; and Oxlade-Chamberlain who, for all his fantastic attacking potential, has made the same kind of mistake in this area of the pitch so many times that it’s now something he’s got to work out of his game.

The introduction of Walcott for Coquelin changed little, while the decision to use Alexis was understandable in the circumstances, but basically farcical. The man had just come back from holidays, had little or no pre-season training, and was being thrust into action to try and save the game. He was a mixture of terrible, as you’d expect, and dangerous – the sheer force of will he possesses to try and make something happen saw him trouble the West Ham defence, and keeper, a couple of times.

I suppose the best you can say is that we got away with it. It felt like the kind of day that could easily have been topped off with him sprinting for a ball in the 93rd minute only to pull up clutching his hamstring. Our bench yesterday consisted of three defenders, a central midfielder, Walcott and a far from ready Alexis. Maybe there is room for one more forward even without a departure?

Were we inhibited by the occasion? That would be a serious worry, but I don’t think it was down to that. It was the first home game of a new season, on a nice day, the mood and atmosphere good, belief and confidence high, and this is a team that showed at Wembley in May that it can cope with expectation and pressure.

My gut feeling on it is that it was just a really bad day at the office, the kind of poor performance that can happen from time to time, rather than any fundamental problem with the players or the team. When you see these players, who we know are capable of much better, clump pass after pass straight out for a throw, you can’t help but worry it’s going to be one of those days. Those little mix-ups aren’t in themselves hugely damaging but they prevent you from building the kind of fluidity and momentum required.

That said, I’m not sure the midfield balance was right, and that’s something the manager has got to figure out quickly. It seemed to work ok against Chelsea, which suggests it’s not an insurmountable problem. Yet ultimately the disappointment in the result is two-fold because we know this team can do better than that. It’s not just the dropped points, it’s the manner of them.

Collectively, and individually, they let themselves down. Perhaps it’s worth remembering that after the Villa game in 2013 we went on to win 8 and draw 1 of our next 9 games. That is the kind of response we need to see again, because this was a meek, feeble, and disheartening way to start the new season.

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As ever James and I will have the Arsecast Extra for you later on. If you have questions or topics for discussion, please send to @gunnerblog and @arseblog with the hashtag #arsecastextra. It’ll be available some time before lunch.

Until then.