A day after any French club’s European clash, L’Equipe will come up player ratings and in today’s edition of the newspaper, we take a look at ratings given to Arsenal players following their 3-1 defeat at the hands of Rennes on Thursday.
The Gunners took an early lead through Alex Iwobi’s goal at Roazhon Park. Sokratis Papastathopoulos received his second yellow of the match four minutes before the break and a minute later, the hosts equalised.
Unai Emery fielded a strong XI and they had a good start to the match, until the former Borussia Dortmund defender left the pitch. Things started getting worse and the English club ‘lost control’ after the centre-back received his marching orders.
Rennes had 19 attempts out of which eight of them were on target. Petr Cech was kept busy and L’Equipe have given him a rating of 7, which is the highest for any player from the north London club.
Papastathopoulos has a blank rating, while his centre-back partner Laurent Koscielny received a rating of 5. An own goal meant Nacho Monreal was not going to get a better rating as L’Equipe gave him 3.
Shkodran Mustafi started as a right-back and was moved to the heart of the back four following Papastathopoulos’ sending off. The German and Koscielny were no match for Rennes’ attack and the former was rated 4 by L’Equipe.
Mesut Ozil and Granit Xhaka are the other two players who received a rating of 4, while Lucas Torreira and Henrikh Mkhitaryan were given a rating of 5.
L’Equipe claims Xhaka and Torreira were ‘significantly worse’ in the midfield and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was a ‘failure’ as the striker did not have any impact on the match, and it saw him receive a rating of 3. 
Arsenal were successful in overcoming a 1-0 deficit against BATE Borisov to progress to the last 16 of the Europa League. It will be seen if Emery’s side can manage to overcome a 3-1 defeat against Rennes.
