Brentford beats Arsenal 2-0 in their first Premier League game since being promoted

On the opening day of this year's Premier League season, Arsenal lost 2-0 to newly promoted side Brentford. Sergi Canos and Christian Norgaard scored to give the Bees a dream start to their 2021-22 season.

From the get-go, Brentford looked like an attacking threat when Bryan Mbeumo went close to firing the promoted Bees into a lead in the 12th minute. His shot from Ivan Toney's pass just clipped the right post. Brentford continued its attack and in the 22nd minute, aided by a failed attempt by the Arsenal defence to clear their line, Ethan Pinnock nodded the ball to Canos who scored past Bernd Leno at his near post to give Brentford their first goal in the English top league after almost 74 years. Mbeumo got the opportunity to double their lead just before half-time but he hit his shot wide of the post.

Arsenal's attempted comeback was not enough

In the second half, the Gunners were trying to find a way back into the match and got close with efforts from Emile Smith Rowe and Granit Xhaka.

Around the 73rd minute, a long throw-in from Mads Bech caused all sorts of problems for the Arsenal defence who just could not cope with it and Norgaard powered his way through to head the ball in and give Brentford all three points in their opening game.

David Raya made a fine save in the 87th minute to preserve their clean sheet when Nicolas Pepe was through on goal.

Arsenal's new signings, centre-back Ben White and midfielder Albert Sambi Lokonga, made their debuts but were overwhelmed by the Bees' attacking gameplay.

Arteta not happy with his team's performance

The Gunners' coach Mikel Arteta spoke about their loss in the post-match interview and was quoted by www.arsenal.com as saying, "Well, we are very disappointed to start the way we did this season. We had really high hopes and we didn’t get the result that we wanted or the performance we wanted."

Arteta also talked about the absence of club captain Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette, both of whom missed out due to illness.

"I don’t know, but I certainly don’t want to use any excuses. We had a team that we put out that’s good enough to play the way that we wanted to play and capable of achieving a different result," said Arteta.

(Image: @premierleague - Twitter)