Arsenal's stuttering start reflects badly on Arsene Wenger

Improvements in the biggest matches — most notably January’s win over Manchester City — further supported that argument and yet here we are, with the season just three days old, analysing how Arsenal were “nervous” and “physically not ready” in Wenger’s words.

What an admission. How can a team that have had a clear week to prepare for their first competitive match lack the requisite sharpness against one that arrived back from Romania in the early hours of Friday morning?

West Ham had taken a shadow squad to Astra Giurgiu last Thursday but the distraction of a Europa League engagement would have complicated their preparation. There is some validity in Wenger’s assessment that the Hammers have had time to sharpen their competitive edge given this was their seventh meaningful game of the season but Arsenal had no excuse not to produce the required intensity from the outset.

Wenger insisted on Friday that Arsenal had done nothing differently in their preparation to elicit a better start to this campaign than the last. Maybe they should have. The Frenchman instead cited the after-effect of the World Cup before launching into an unprovoked attack on the Premier League for starting the season on August 8.

In hindsight, perhaps that anger stemmed from an inner concern that his players were not ready. And if Wenger believes his own narrative that the title was lost in the first 15 games last season, then it does not reflect well on the manager that his team were so undercooked having placed such great importance on a fast start this time.

“I felt we were a bit nervous and we rushed our game a bit,” he said. “We didn’t always respect the basics. We wanted to be too quick going forward in the first half. I don’t think we were too confident, I would rather say too nervous maybe.”

Cheikhou Kouyate’s 44th-minute goal did not instigate the anticipated second-half siege on West Ham’s goal. In fact, despite a brief flurry late on, Mauro Zarate’s strike 12 minutes after the restart made the result safe from a long way out. Petr Cech’s League debut for Arsenal could hardly have gone worse but the 33-year-old’s quality should shine through as the season progresses. We are now already pondering whether the same will be said of Arsenal.

West Ham were everything Arsenal were not: physically sharp, mentally focused, disciplined and clinical in the final third. Reece Oxford defied his age — at 16 years and 237 days he became the seventh-youngest player in Premier League history — and deployment out of position in central midfield to produce a marvellous display.

While Arsenal overplayed in central areas, Oxford and his team-mates remained compact. Dimitri Payet added a touch of class to West Ham’s attacking play as Slaven Bilic’s decision to rest players with this game in mind paid off. It was like he planned it in advance.

The surprise was that it didn’t look like Arsenal had any such forethought.