{"id":124576,"date":"2025-08-06T21:12:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T21:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/124576\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T21:12:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T21:12:09","slug":"arsenal-fc-work-to-do-as-villarreal-defeat-exposes-naive-weaknesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/124576\/","title":{"rendered":"Arsenal FC: Work to do as Villarreal defeat exposes naive\u00a0weaknesses"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Arsenal<\/p>\n

Arsenal<\/a> were handed their second defeat of pre-season as they were beaten by Villarreal.<\/p>\n

Arsenal hit back through efforts from Christian Norgaard and Martin Odegaard, but it was not enough to stop them falling to a defeat.<\/p>\n

And, here, Standard Sport takes a look at some talking points from the game\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

Arsenal will take time to adapt to Gyokeres<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fans had arrived eager to get their first glimpse of Viktor Gyokeres<\/a>, but instead it was Norgaard who found the net.<\/p>\n

The Danish midfielder headed home at the back post midway through the first half after Gabriel Martinelli<\/a>\u2019s corner found him unmarked.<\/p>\n

It was the sort of chance Gyokeres would have loved to have been presented with, however, he largely had to feed off scraps.<\/p>\n

The Swede\u2019s best opportunity came just before he was taken off around the hour mark, when a through-ball from Mikel Merino found him in the box.<\/p>\n

Gyokeres was quick to get his shot off, but from a tight angle, Villarreal goalkeeper Luiz Junior was able to keep it out.<\/p>\n

Other than that, Gyokeres was largely quiet as he made his first start for Arsenal. That was not due to a lack of effort and, more than once, he made runs in behind – but his team-mates did not find him.<\/p>\n

Clearly, it will take time for Arsenal to get used to the way their new No9 plays.<\/p>\n

If there was one clear positive for Mikel Arteta<\/a> after this defeat, it was the performance of Max Dowman.<\/p>\n

The 15-year-old has enjoyed a, quite frankly, remarkable pre-season, and he was impressive again in this defeat to Villarreal.<\/p>\n

Handed 30 minutes off the bench, Dowman looked so sharp, beating defenders for fun and causing problems.<\/p>\n

It was Dowman who won the penalty, which Odegaard slotted home, deftly turning in the box to draw a foul.<\/p>\n

Arsenal will want to control the hype around Dowman, given he is so young that he will not be taking his GCSEs until next summer.<\/p>\n

It will become increasingly hard to, however, when the teenager keeps putting in performances like this one.<\/p>\n

Dowman looked at home on such a stage, playing at Emirates Stadium with the first team for the first time.<\/p>\n

Arteta unhappy with defensive display<\/strong><\/p>\n

Arteta labelled Arsenal\u2019s defending as \u201cnaive\u201d in this defeat, and it certainly not in keeping with their usual displays.<\/p>\n

For Villarreal\u2019s opening goal, Jakub Kiwior was muscled off the ball too easily at the back post as Pepe scored.<\/p>\n

The visitors\u2019 second also came after some sloppy defending and this time Eyong was on hand to fire home a rebound.<\/p>\n

The third, and ultimately winning goal, was a result of Arsenal being hit on the counter, as former Tottenham forward Danjuma arrowed a strike into the bottom corner.<\/p>\n

This was the third pre-season game in a row that Arsenal have failed to keep a clean sheet and they have been uncharacteristically shaky at the back.<\/p>\n

The change in personnel has not helped, with Gabriel only getting his first minutes of pre-season during the second half here.<\/p>\n

Cristhian Mosquera summed up the experimentation, with his 45 minutes split between right-back and the heart of defence.<\/p>\n

Arteta will hope a settled backline, perhaps on Saturday against Athletic Bilbao, will bring better results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arsenal were handed their second defeat of pre-season as they were beaten by Villarreal. Arsenal hit back through…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":124577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[76732,76730,13721,76731,62,67,132,68,13723],"class_list":{"0":"post-124576","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-emirates-stadium","9":"tag-gabriel-martinelli","10":"tag-mikel-arteta","11":"tag-nicolas-pepe","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-viktor-gyokeres"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114983884791840417","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}