Stoke City 1-0 Arsenal: Gunners Suffer First League Defeat Of The Season At Bogey Ground

Stoke City 1-0 Arsenal…

We experienced our first defeat of the season at Stoke City in a performance which resembled many of our poor showings last season.

Debutant Jese grabbed the winner for the hosts, despite having only 27% possession throughout the encounter as we missed a number of good opportunities.

While our chances should’ve resulted in a few goals, not many of them were extremely clear-cut and Jack Butland wasn’t made to do much to save them.

However, the major talking points came from the officials as referee Andre Marriner turned down a huge penalty claim from Hector Bellerin, while the linesman chalked off an effort from Alexandre Lacazette.

Bellerin was clearly mauled down by Mame Biram Diouf as he bore down on goal, yet the ref only pointed to the corner flag for a corner kick.

It was a really astonishing decision.

The Lacazette decision can be explained after a few replays, but there’s no way the linesman saw that his toe may have been offside in real-time.

It means he guessed and didn’t give the benefit of doubt to the striker.

However, Lacazette proved that he only needs a sniff to find the back of the net, which made it even more bizarre to see Wenger drag him off for Walcott.

Despite all that, we really shouldn’t be losing a game in which we dominate over two-thirds of the play, but it proves that you don’t need much to beat Arsenal nowadays.

Granit Xhaka, who was poor throughout, gave the ball away just inside Stoke City’s half and in a matter of seconds, we’re 1-0 down.

It was far too easy and it exposes the holes in our new 3-4-3 system, a formation Wenger said was introduced to make us more defensively sound.

After conceding three goals in our home win against Leicester City, we’re clearly not there yet.

Check out the highlights from the clash in the video above.

source: BT Sport