Arsenal vs Crystal Palace player ratings: Hidden resilience

Arsenal traveled to Selhurt Park looking to get a sense of where Mikel Arteta‘s regime stood. Here are the player ratings from the result.

Arsenal took their hopes to Selhurst park, hoping to vault ahead of their hosts in the table with a win. The Gunners lined up exactly as they had been, with exclusively veteran talent across the board, no youngsters to speak of.

It paid dividends early. This club controlled 80% of possession early on and it wasn’t idle possession either. They were getting the ball forward, probing, resetting, getting forward, probing, all quickly and convincingly.

The breakthrough only took twelve minutes to get to, as a deep pass from David Luiz found Mesut Ozil, who laid it off perfectly to Mesut Ozil, who himself laid it off to Alexandre Lacazette, who timed his pass perfectly, finding Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang for an easy goal. 1-0.

Find the latest episode of the Pain in the Arsenal Podcast here 

The rest of the first half got a bit testy, but the Gunners defended beautifully to keep any and all Palace threats at bay. While we did lose the sting of our attack, a 1-0 lead at half was plenty to be excited about.

That is, until a lucky deflection in the 54th gave Palace an equalizer. Not sure what else to add to that. Maybe we could have defended the free kick better, but it wouldn’t have gone in of not for the severe deflection.

To be honest, the pendulum was swinging in Palace’s favor anyway, and the Gunners needed to answer. And this compiled when Aubameyang was sent off just after the hour mark for a truly awful challenge that earned him a red. This seemed to spark something in the yellow shirts, as they showcased tremendous resilience to fight on and nearly pull ahead late on, but in the end they couldn’t get the job done.

Here are the player ratings

Goalkeeper