Pre-season matches continued on Tuesday and Wednesday, with West Ham United in action again and Arsenal taking on Hibernian in their first run-out.
We’ll be documenting every warm-up game result, every minute played (where line-ups are available), every goal, every assist and much more in our dedicated Pre-Season tab, which will be updated regularly ahead of Gameweek 1.
And we’ll have Scout Notes on every friendly, too, continuing with a mixed night for the Gunners and the Hammers.
Hibernian 2-1 Arsenal
- Goal: Emile Smith Rowe (£5.5m)
- Assist: Hector Bellerin (£5.0m)
- Penalty missed: Nicolas Pepe (£7.5m)
Substitute Emile Smith Rowe (£5.5m) scored Arsenal’s only goal as the Gunners lost 2-1 to Hibs in their pre-season opener.
Most of Arsenal’s first-team players were handed 45 minutes as they eased into the beginning of the campaign.
Nicolas Pepe (£7.5m) won a second-half penalty but failed to convert from 12 yards, with Alexandre Lacazette (£8.5m) on the field but Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (£10.0m) having departed the action at half-time.
Rumoured Inter Milan target Hector Bellerin (£5.0m) assisted Smith Rowe’s goal, finding the midfielder at the back post with a deflected cross.
On the young midfielder’s performance, Mikel Arteta said:
“He knows that it (scoring) is a part of the game he needs to get better at. We are working on it a lot and you could see the positions that he took today. He created two or three big chances.
Arsenal conceded early on with a mix-up in defence involving 19-year-old goalkeeper Arthur Okonkwo, before conceding from a second-half corner.
“I’m always disappointed when we lose a football match but it is the first game, we played with many kids and we only had four training sessions.
“We’ve trained really hard and you could see that the players were a little bit leggy. I think we conceded the first goal, an accident, and the second goal was clearly offside.
“We created many, many chances but we didn’t score. That’s what pre-season is for, to take the things that we haven’t done well into a training session and then improve.” – Mikel Arteta
Asked if a lack of training so far explains the performance, Arteta added:
It does but there’s no excuse because we want to come here and win the match. They worked really hard, the boys worked really hard and you could see that some of them were not in the best condition, but we’re still very early in pre-season. It was great to see some of the young lads making their debuts here. We’ll keep working.
Arsenal XI: Okonkwo (Hein 46′); Kolasinac (Hutchinson 80′), Mari, Clarke (Rekik 46′), Soares (Bellerin 63′), Elneny (Henry-Francis 75′), Maitland-Niles (Partey 46′), Aubameyang (Lacazette 46′), Willian (Smith Rowe 46′), Nelson (Pepe 46′), Nketiah (Balogun 46′)
Leyton Orient 0-0 West Ham United
Michail Antonio (£7.5m) played 90 minutes in the first of West Ham’s two simultaneous friendlies on Tuesday.
That followed a 45-minute showing in the Hammers’ first pre-season tie last Friday.
His only chance of the game came after 82 minutes: the striker got his head onto an Aaron Cresswell (£5.5m) cross but the Leyton Orient goalkeeper was equal to the effort.
On splitting his squad across two games in one evening, David Moyes said:
I wanted to get the senior players 90 minutes on the pitch tonight, so we were pleased get that into their legs. There are a lot of players away just now and not back, so it’s not helping with the moment in putting strong teams out, and it was a hard game for us [at Orient].
Orient played well and we have to give them credit for the way they played, I must say. It was tough for us, but good for the other team who won 2-1 tonight at Northampton. The two results were okay for us.
[Most importantly] we wanted to give them 90 minutes, that’s why we split them and I’m pleased that we had the chance to do that.”
West Ham XI v Leyton Orient: Randolph, Cresswell, Baptiste, Ogbonna, Ashby (Potts 46′), Johnson, Noble, Ekwah, Oko-Flex (Diallo 75′), Antonio, Silva.
NORTHAMPTON 1-2 WEST HAM UNITED
- Goals: Sid Nelson own-goal, Conor Coventry
- Assist: Jarrod Bowen (£6.5m), Manuel Lanzini (£6.0m)
Jarrod Bowen (£6.5m) claimed his second assist of pre-season with a cross that Northampton defender Sid Nelson put into his own net after just a minute.
The winger saw his corner headed home in the Irons’ first pre-season outing, while also converting from the penalty spot.
And Manuel Lanzini (£6.0m) earned an assist against Northampton, with a pass in the 14th minute that Conor Coventry stuck in the bottom corner from inside the edge of the box.
There were plenty more 90-minute runouts for senior players, with assistant manager Stuart Pearce choosing to make only two substitutions.
Moyes’s post-match comments suggested that the likes of Vladimir Coufal (£5.0m) and Tomas Soucek (£6.0m) are “weeks away” from a return, following their exertions at the European Championship.
“We’ve got a long way to go and it’s difficult at the moment where we’ve only got half the squad but we’re trying to get everybody in the best condition we can. Most of them aren’t back for another two to three weeks yet but we’ll get some of them back and start to build them up in the coming weeks.
“But the likes of Declan (Rice), the Czech boys have a few weeks to go yet. They have holiday time and they deserve it for the way they played for us last year and they did really well at the Euros. So they have time off and we’ll factor that in as well.
“We’re training the players all the time and we’re working them hard, so we’re hoping to keep building on it and we want to get back to the levels we were at last year. We’ve got high standards to set and we’re looking forward to doing that.” – David Moyes
West Ham XI v Northampton: Trott, Fredericks, Dawson, Alves, Alese, Coventry, Forson (Rosa 77), Lanzini, Bowen, Holland, Odubeko (Swyer 85).
Watford 3-2 Millwall
- Goals: Domingos Quina (£4.5m), Adam Masina (£4.5m), Ashley Fletcher (£5.0m)
Watford beat Millwall 3-2 in a behind-closed-doors pre-season friendly on Wednesday.
Domingos Quina (£4.5m) scored from a free-kick before Millwall went 2-1 up.
Adam Masina (£4.5m) restored parity before Ashley Fletcher (£5.0m) grabbed a winner.
No line-up information was revealed.
2 years, 9 months agoEsr in watchlist. If he can take pen from Pepe etc, thats gold