Arsenal moved 5 points clear at the top of the table as a 98th minute Declan Rice winner saw the Gunners come from 3-2 down to win it at the death.
2-1 up at half-time, Mikel Arteta’s men were shaky at the back, not least keeper David Raya, but Kai Havertz grabbed an equaliser before the late drama broke Luton hearts.
Here’s how the players rated this evening.
Read the Luton 3-4 Arsenal match report and see the goals here
Luton 3-4 Arsenal – Player Ratings
The ratings are hidden by default until you vote, but if you just want to view the ratings and the comments, flick the switch at the top above David Raya. Also, please give the ratings a few seconds to load.
No bonus rating for scoring in the last minute of stoppage time?? 10/10!
Richard Keys must be absolutely fuming about the celebrations!
Well he can go fuck himself with a rusty wire brush then.
Or ask his daughter’s friend to do it.
I couldn’t help myself.
Fucking lol. I had to Google what you were referencing.
What a hairy handed scumbag
🤣 👏
Ouch… now I am never gonna get that tawdry image out of my brain!
Who are two Richard Keys fans downvoting these posts? Identify yourselves and explain your actions!
Well done, COYG
Saka!
+?
No ranking for Bukayo. 8.5 for me!
What a player Declan Rice and to think there’s still more to come from him. Oof!
Re goalkeeper: why fix what’s not broken though? Arsenal were sorted in the goalkeeper position with Ramsdale 🤔
Even if Raya is a better keeper than Ramsdale, the bad thing is he does not feel any pressure. He has made several mistakes and got selected again, even for cup games. That’s not how Arteta manages other players.
Absolute rubbish. When Ramsdale gave away a goal in the first minute against Southampton last season, was he dropped the next game? No.
This is Ramsdale’s 3rd season with us. He was given plenty of time to bed in and get used to playing at a higher level than he had previously.
Raya will be given the same opportunity. The guy has played 10 games for us – people expecting him to be flawless from the start are both impatient and slightly deluded.
So the thing that you probably don’t want to remind is that Matt Turner was the second option last season.
I see your point Kaius. But there have been a lot of gaffs up to now.
Yeah Raya was diabolically bad today. What you said about the keeper situation being a “style change, not an improvement” is bang on.
Some players can play through bad spells, while others need to be benched. I honestly don’t know which category Raya is in.
Raya looks spooked to me. His confidence is shot. I think he needs to sit and Ramsdale should start from now on, or at least until he has a game as bad as this one was for Raya. The effect on the team would be positive, too. Ramsdale is popular with them and it’s not really clear why he lost his place. Everyone knows that had Rambo been between the sticks today, there would have been a lot less drama.
Not sure why you automatically assume there would be less drama with Ramsdale? Both our keepers are good but flawed in their positioning and distribution. Better goalies than they are also found wanting this season: Alisson (Liverpool) Sanchez (Chelsea) Pope (Newcastle) Onana (Man Utd) and Martinez (Villa) have all been guilty of howlers this season but their respective managers don’t automatically switch them with the number 2 in the next game
Very good point, about those other keepers, Allison has been really poor especially:
There is ‘flawless’ and there is ‘having an Almunia’ – last night was the latter.
Make no mistake, the better opponents will target Raya’s frailties mercilessly in future games – he has, unfortunately, shown some obvious weaknesses, which will be exploited.
Caveat emptor.
This will now become a test of principle vs pride: does Mik enforce his established principle and give Raya a bench-breather to refocus (Auba, Pepe, Laca, Rambo, ESR, Tierney, etc)?
Or does he bloody-mindedly keep starting him, simply to prove his own purchase decision?
Raya is a good keeper but he certainly has a ‘flap’ in him – very concerning.
Ramsdale made a mistake having not played in months away to Brentford. Raya makes two gaffs a game in any game where the opposition can actually get shots off. Imagine if Ramsdale had done that. Imagine if he had made that pass to Tomi against Lens, nearly punched it into his own net against Sevilla at 2-1, passed to a Man City player, passed to a Chelsea player. What would we be saying? I just call it how I see it. So far Raya has looked ordinary. Tonight he was a liability. Perhaps more will come from him but thus… Read more »
Don’t get me wrong. Its a great win and I am delighted. But saying Raya at a game at home against Wolves having played in a 6-0 win against Lens, looks better than Ramsdale having come out from the cold to play at the Gtech against Brentford, just does not seem fair nor accurate to me. Two big mistakes in this game and while it was great the idea was for Raya to calm things down so we can last the season. The team had to carry his mistakes today and bail him out. It was great, I love this… Read more »
It is a style change, Chris, but I think one of the main changes was supposed to be being a better commanding keeper on crosses.
The fact is, Arteta prefers Raya in the system and the system is working. we are top
Well, we, the supporters, have the right to say what we think. If the opinion is that the manager knows better, it’s better to switch the comment section off.
Have a look at Havertz. He was poor for a few games, he was benched. He got better, he got the chance again. This has been the principle, as mentioned above, for many players. But I don’t see this coming for Raya. I would be more than happy if Mikel proves me wrong.
This whole ‘we’re winning so your negativity is NOT welcome’ vibe just annoys me. Yes, I’m delighted we’re winning and at being top of the league and am enjoying those occasions where we are having to dig a result out of a hole through resilience and collective organisation. That said, we’re perfectly entitled to voice our misgivings about the manager’s selections and tactics that we feel may undermine our ability to land trophies this season. As things stand, I don’t think we’ll win the league but will finish top four and reach the quarter finals of the CL. We’re out… Read more »
stuff of dreams
Get in!!! That was the usual routine heartstopper. All’s well that ends well …. as the man said!
Was Saka zapped into another dimension? Wait, did I dream him up all this time??
No Saka ?
Salary so good, he pulls a solid 8/10 and doesn’t even get rated
Saka*
I wish we all got solid salaries and don’t get rated
Where’s Saka?
Still waiting for them to review the Gabriel penalty shout in the post-match on Amazon…
I thought the Saka one was equally as egregious. You can’t just clatter someone when the ball is gone. Anywhere else on the pitch and that’s a free kick. And you can bet your life if someone went through Grealish like that it would be a pen.
In real time I said to myself “that’s not a penalty.” Guys run into each other all the time, there was no intent from the defender. If that had been given against us y’all would be all up in arms.
Well said that man. Even allowing for the possibility that two speeding objects can collide accidentally in a confined space while pursuing the same object is completely beyond the stretch of most football fans.
I love this team so much
Come on you Gunners!!!!
That’s not a last minute winner, it’s a last second winner! Shearer saying not sure where the extra minute came from when the ref made it blatantly clear that the luton defender was taking far too long on the throw on. Defensively shoddy tonight but I thought we looked like scoring a lot in the second half, not sure how Roberto Martinez thought Luton were better than us in the second half
Shearer is a bitter geordie. He’s a sausage
I really don’t want to be hairist. I have bald friends and family and I love them. But Shearer is, just like all those bald refs from up north, just a “fucking bellend”, as Lewis Dunk so eloquently put it.
The time added on is just eating into valuable masturbation time for the couch potato pundits.
Shearer gets paid to talk about what it takes to win all the trophies he never won as a player
When the board comes up with “6” on it, it means a minimum of 6 minutes. It could mean 6 minutes, 59 seconds. And then the ref can add to this during the 6+ minutes if he sees time being wasted, which he did.
If it makes Shearer unhappy it makes me happy.
We literally faced 4 minutes of added time to added time against Wolves on Saturday, and I don’t think there was any significant stoppage during the original added time
Against wolves ref put up 6mins we played 8mins. Nobody cried
Havertz the man of the match for me. Glided through the Luton midfield, and dominated in the air which gave us a long ball out from the Luton press. All in all a ‘get out of jail free’ with the late goal, but certainly not the easiest ground to go to. Luton deserve something so I’ll let them have 3 PTS next week against city.
Havertz has been very good the last three matches he’s played. Good enough so that if they had been the first three matches of the season, everyone would be saying we stole him from Chelsea. May get there yet.
Yes. He looks like there is more to come too. Very exciting.
Pre game they were talking about Saliba being possibly the best cb in the league…
How long has it been since we’ve been able to say we have the best in the league. Now we can say we have Saliba, Rice and Saka… arguably the best in their position.
The future is bright!!
Don’t forget Odegaard in that list.
He’s very good, but he’s not KDB yet. Could be though
There’s a legitimate argument about De Bruyne and Odegaard. But there’s also an argument about Salah and Saka.
like night and day!!!
I posted the KDB/Martin comparative stats on here late last season, when this debate first emerged. The Viking has markedly better stats in almost every metric.
KDB also blows hot and cold. When he’s at full tilt, yes, a superstar but he doesn’t approach anything close to that every game.
And doesn’t have half of Martin’s steel and work-rate.
And Martinelli 😀
Best two keepers in the league as well😀
After Onana and the guy ETH says is statistically better…
We are all elated and it didn’t matter in the end but not too forget – another shocker from VAR wrt Gabriel. Plus how did the Luton fullback on get booked?!
After Arteta’s criticism of the poor standard of officiating any decision that can be ignored will be.
The pull of the arm quite probably prevented Gabriel from reaching the ball for a headed attempt at goal’ that’s exactly the sort of penalty that should be given. I don’t blame the referee who can’t see everything in a crowded penalty area–but that is (or should be) the whole point of VAR. Instead it’s used to give idiotic “handballs.”
Pity, If he’d connected with that cross we’d have had all 4 Gabriels on the pitch on the scoresheet.
Saka rating?
I think 4 is a bit generous for Raya, not been as frustrated by a goalkeeping performance since the days of Almunia! On more positive news, Havertz is looking better and better and Rice, what more can you say? £100m bargain.
I’m not even seeing all this elite ball playing that we were supposed to get with Raya. He’s a bag of nerves and you can tell he doesn’t have the trust of his teammates.
Agreed, but we saw how well he could play and withstand pressure when he was the undisputed No one at Brendford. But we’ve got the worst case, where neither keeper has any confidence.
Seriously, Raya was so poor. If he were fixing the match, would he have done anything differently today? Well past time to switch back to Ramsdale.
Phoned in sick?
Rice might be so good that he even justifies the outlay on a quickly improving Havertz. It’s a team game, so if the overall gain is large enough, Decs contribution allows for Kai’s slower integration. The Raya/Rambo thing is boring me, they’re footballers get over it, but it does look like Raya needs a moment to sit down and watch someone deal crosses properly.
Granted Raya should have stopped the third goal but the blame on the first two should be shared by the guys who missed their coverage, allowing free headers – I think that was Jesus on the first and Rice on the second.
It was Martinelli on the first and there was nothing Raya could do about that one tbf. But on the second, a commanding keeper just makes that his all day long. Really sloppy to be beaten by the attacker there!
Raya definitely should have done better there.
10/10 for Rice, Odegaard, and Havertz. When everyone was ripping Havertz apart just five matches ago I said he just needed time. Little did I know what a short period of time it would be. Not such a waste of money now, is he?
Kai Havertz scores again!
Any other predictions we need to be aware of? Jokes aside, I agree, give the guy some time.
Yes, we’re winning the league this year.
No we ain’t. (As much as we would love it)
Something is not right with your thinking! We gonna get it done! COYG!!
Everyone here hopes you’re right but the issues from last season have never been fully addressed: our bench cannot match the depth of a Man City (or a Newcastle’s yet to come once they start spending the Saudi wonga) We don’t have a reliable left back. (Yes, there’s a reason Man City let Zinchenko go). We don’t have an adequate deputy for Gabriel Jesus or Saka. We no longer have a number one goalie. Vieira, Nelson, Ntekia, Havertz, Elneny and Jorginho don’t start for any other side in the top six. We’ll finish top 4 and make the quarter finals… Read more »
Your life must be unbearable.
Goodly evening!
Good ebening is coming to us
Let’s hope it’s us having a good ebening on Saturday, I’m worried about the villa.
Shearer is an absolute tool. Moaning about the extra minute. Hates us. He’s just a baby. A big baby. A big Rice Rice baby. Coyg.
He hates us because we’re good.
And because he knows his oily lucre burgled a dodgy result against us.
A baby paid millions from.our licence fees to repeat the exact same mindless cliches every Saturday. At least with Wrighty or Micah Richards there’s a spark of wit, personality and footballing insight. From Shearer it’s always “to a man they put their bodies on the line” for whichever team wins and the losers get “they just didn’t show up today”.
For someone who won so little as a professional footballer, it’s amazing there are sufficient numbers of us to care about his opinions on teams and players whose achievements dwarf his own.
Here in the States we say people like him are always ‘moving the goalposts’: he’s obviously biased against the Arsenal. ‘What’s good for the gander is not for the goose’- I believe you do use that axiom. He’s too blind to realize how obviously he acts that way.
also when you see that shearer offers no more insight than timmy howard on nbc…
Didn’t expect to be gifting them goals all night. Don’t want to comment on Raya.
Chuffed for Rice, Havertz and the rest of the boys. Great to have so many scorers in this team. Coyg
immense game by gabriel jesus who won a lot of duels against bigger men to score and set up his teammates. odegaard’s been much better since coming back from his injury, and havertz is getting involved more and more and im loving it. rice is becoming our player of the season. that being said, extremely sloppy from raya. and it’s hard to ask for ramsdale after his shaky performance against brentford. special rating is 0/10 for nketiah. in a game in which we needed a goal against a tight defense, we had absolutely nobody to get in. we can shift… Read more »
Interesting comment. Whilst criticising Eddie typically gets down-votes on here, you make a valid point: watching the dimunitive Jesus fight and fight and fight against the lumbering Stoke-Orcs all night, his excellent hold-up play, back-tracking and general ‘irritating mosquito’ persistence over the 90, you cannot but help compare that to Eddie’s almost disinterest unless and until the ball gets served up to him in an attacking position – which he then, too often, squanders. It’s a reality. You’d expect the roles to be reversed if anything, given Eddie’s ‘young pretender’ status and Jesus’ senior man status… where’s the relentless hunger,… Read more »
Not a vintage performance, defensively weak, but we found a way to win the game against a spirited, competitive and physical Luton side. Three points, job done.
With a decent keeper we would have not conceded the 2 goals in the second half. It was purely up to poor goalkeeping
No, White was poor against Barkley – it was pretty much point blank. He should have been more decisive on the second corner, but honestly, people are overreacting
It simply wasn’t point blank. White was off, sure, but seeing it as anything other than desperately weak keeping is delusional.
Still begs the question: Did Raya’s jittery performance affect the defenders in front of him at set pieces?
If Raya just stood still he would have saved it with his feet. He actually had to work to let it in.
I don’t think we were defensively weak as a team. Two goalkeeping errors (the first was poor goalkeeping, the second a genuine howler), otherwise it’s 3-1 and we gave them almost nothing. (For the record, this is not an anti-Raya comment. Early in the season, Saka cost us a goal and two points with a terrible backpass. I thought it was worth giving the lad another chance.)
0/10 Luton supporters whinging about our players being fouled, they probably boo the sick like those orcs in stoke
Jesus, Kai, Odegaard, Rice, and Saka were brilliant today! But Kai especially, he felt comfortable from the first minute against a very physical and (dare I say) dirty team. He was a proper nuisance and didn’t take any crap. Loved it.
You got that right about “dirty.” Knees in the back of our guys after the ball is gone, clattering into them at full speed, and just a couple yellows. They thought it would intimidate us, but it didn’t. Luckily no one seemed to be hurt. I thought the crowd intimidated the referee though.
The crowd intimidated the referee? Kenilworth Road is a library
wasn’t aware they had those in luton
Before we even think about spending a boatload more on another goalkeeper, we should replace the head GK coach Inaki Cana
In addition to his disastrous signing recommendations (the Runarsson signing in particular was a joke), all of our keepers under his watch have either regressed from very good to shaky, or just weren’t up to scratch from the off. Apart from Martinez I guess, but he didn’t play enough games for us to have a chance to regress.
But he did spend a lot of years being trained by him??
Actually, this is the best comment I’ve read in a long time. We had Leno, we had Emi, then we found Ramsdale – and all that time Caña was pushing for Raya, who doesn’t look like an Arsenal player and I’m so glad we haven’t spent that 27m on him yet. I hope we never do and we’re back to Ramsdale who’ll find his confidence again. Let’s get a better GK coach.
You would think that Mikel watching this would be thinking about his coach.
I hadn’t thought about this but you’re probably right. Interesting
I completely agree. Remarkable things have happened at this club but the GK situation is a complete mess and previous signings have been questionable too.
Such a shame therefore to report that Martinez is clearly the world’s greatest unsolicited sperm donor
Odegaard is back, what a player
Raya was stinking up the place with his performance, it even shows in the picture above the ratings
Easy now
I am nominating Jesus’s yellow card as the cheapest yellow in the history of the league.
Felt like he was giving Barkley a bit of payback for his Martinelli challenge- “don’t fuck with my teammate, have a little tumble yourself, wanker”
I agree–I thought it was actually a decent decision by the referee to keep control. My criticism of him (I blame the VAR for the penalty decisions) is–like every other referee–he allows serial hard fouls that individually don’t rate a yellow card. For me, the third guys who barrels into Saka (or Grealish, for that matter) gets a card.
A lot of competition there. Martinelli’s two at Wolves, Tomiyasu’s two at Palace just off the top of my head.
You’re hardly comparing like with like here. Martinelli deserved a straight red at Wolves for sheer stupidity
Arteta’s today for celebrating too enthusiastically…
Kai has settled in. We are beginning to see why Arteta brought him in. He’ll score more goals than Xhaka, and his work rate off the ball is great. He just needed time to rid himself of the Chelsea dross.
Rice is singlehandedly capable of turning title contenders to winners.
£65m and £105m well spent.
How nice is it seeing Kai playing like himself again? It was genuinely sad seeing him not able to make a pass for a while there. Proper part of the team now. We’ve gone from playing with 9 players to 10. Let’s hope Raya can have his coming of age soon too because lord knows he needs it and Arteta (much as I love him) is far too stubborn to go back to Ramsdale.
Delighted with that but man made hard work of it .
Villa will be strong I’d start Leo I stead of Gabi Mart, he shifted heavy knock and be some impact from bench
One of the sweetest 3pts ever
A 4 for Raya is very generous.
I like Arteta and he is doing amazing things, but he’s fucked up on the keeper issue big time.
Oh man shut up about it
Mate, he let in two goals.
We pay plenty for tickets, travel, accommodation and merch so we’re perfectly entitled to voice our opinion
I like how we never give up till the last second.. it is a vital trait that makes champions. Always believing and pushing till the very end
First of all, made up with the win, the mentality of the team is genuinely next level, and Declan Rice is comfortably in the top 3 midfielders in the league.
But a 4 for Raya is extremely generous. He was really really awful, and this whole goalkeeper situation is frankly a bit of a mess at this current moment in time. Arteta’s got plenty of credit in the bank that we should trust his judgement, but it’s difficult to believe that every player gets a fair crack at the whip based off of this
In what universe is the two-handed pull by the No 2 on Gabriel not a penalty?
PGMOL payback for Arteta’s criticism
The PLVARiverse!
Thank god we won, bescause that blatant penalty on Gabriel was going to be rent free in my mind for weeks.
I thought Leo had a bad game
I really wish Saka would punish them more and push the attack when given a chance. He spends almost all game 2 vs 1, but when he finally got given a few good passes into space he didn’t take his man on and try make something happen. If he wants to get his name in the highest bracket along with Messi, Salah etc he needs to be more ruthless in those situations. That one where Jesus laid it off and then Saka played it back, just for Jesus to be offside was so frustrating. Back yourself Saka and make it… Read more »
Don’t want to be too negative about Raya. He was responsible for 2 goals. Anyone can have an off day, but for a keeper who is supposed to be so good with his feet, he sure played a lot of long balls. I mean a lot.
I prefer Ramsdale but maybe Arteta is right that Raya should be number one. However, having two keepers who are good enough to start is not good for either keeper. Raya often looks afraid to make a mistake, as did Ramsdale when he played at Brentford. One has to go.
The next game will show whether Arteta’s “two number ones” was BS.
100M for Rice sure looks a bargain to me. And I’ve been saying it all along, 60 for Havertz was too. He’s had time to settle and now he’s starting to come good. The scary thing is he’s just getting started.
I said it on the article confirming his purchase, and I’ve been saying it ever since. Give him time to remember how to play in the midfield after four seasons of being shoehorned into a 9 and he will be a beast. Looks to me like he’s starting to prove me right.
I know white is a favourite here and he has been good in general but this is now the third time he hasn’t come out quickly to an attacker and allowed them to have a easy sight on goal
Really struggling to deal with the Raya decision. He’s simply not better than Ramsdale. But Martinet Mikel will not relent so we are stuck with him. This is just misguided,
Glorious! (Raya out!)
Obviously sucks to have given up the goals we did (and worrisome especially with Raya’s performance), but on the positive side we got four goals against a team that is very tough defending at home and had some other great chances.
Time to drop Raya and play Ramsdale?
Really hope we don’t buy Raya, he is not an upgrade.
Hope we can find someone better than Rambo and Raya between the sticks
The Rice-ing on the cake