WEST HAM dealt a painful blow to Arsenal’s top four ambitions on Saturday with a 1-0 win at the London Stadium.

Hammers midfielder Declan Rice scored his first goal for the club to record their first home win over the Gunners for 13 years.

It was an insipid display from the visitors and boss Unai Emery made no attempt to downplay the significance of this defeat. They now have a gap of six points to bridge between them and Chelsea in fourth place whom they face next weekend in what is now a must-win match.

“It’s more difficult,” the Spaniard sighed. “I think the most important thing for us is to recover our confidence. Today is a bad result. If we could have won we would have gone into the game with Chelsea with the gap just three points.”

The north Londoners didn’t offer up too many chances and will be disappointed with how the goal was conceded. Felipe Anderson was allowed to get to the by-line and cross before Granit Xhaka’s headed clearance went straight to pantomime villain Samir Nasri, making his first league appearance for West Ham against his former side. He squared to Rice who slotted it beautifully into the top corner.

The post-mortem focused on the absence of Arsenal’s highest earner Mesut Ozil. The German, who earns £350,000 a week, was not named in the matchday squad, understandably causing outrage among much of the visiting support.

When quizzed on the midfielder’s exclusion, the manager offered a typically fudged explanation: “Sometimes he’s helping us but in this moment he isn’t because of his injury. Maybe the match is not for him but he’s a good player.”

It’s unclear how West Ham away can be deemed a match unsuitable for a player like Ozil, given the relatively unintimidating atmosphere and bags of space at the London Stadium which would suit his vision and range of passing hugely.

Emery’s flexible approach to tactics and personnel was lauded in the first few months of his Arsenal career when his substitutions were clearly making positive impacts. 

But the theme of switching to a different game plan has continued, which suggests the Spaniard is yet to grasp the system that best suits his players’ attributes.

Ten minutes into the second-half, Emery acknowledged his side’s offensive shortcomings and elected to make a double change, throwing on Aaron Ramsey and Lucas Torreira.

The starting line-up was one of caution with two defensive midfielders in Xhaka and Matteo Guendouzi. Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang were generally starved of any real service up top.

It was an act of desperation and did little, if anything, to remedy the dire lack of support to the frontmen. This was the first time since their opening match of the season against Man City that Arsenal failed to score a goal, while registering just two shots on target.

This should feel like a missed opportunity to remain in the chase for top four as Arsenal now go into a tough run of fixtures including Chelsea and Manchester City as well as the FA Cup tie with Man United.