‘I wasn’t happy’… Alan Brazil says he was not at all impressed by £30m Arsenal player last night

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Alan Brazil has suggested that he was not happy with one Arsenal player’s performance against Nottingham Forest, claiming that he was outshone by one of his teammates.

Arsenal left the City Ground with the three points, with Gabriel Jesus and Bukayo Saka scoring their goals in the second-half. It came after another frustrating first-half for the Gunners, where they rarely looked like scoring.

The opening goal came from a clever piece of play from Oleksandr Zinchenko. The Ukrainian quickly took the throw-in which played Gabriel Jesus in. And Jesus forced an error from Matt Turner to break the deadlock.

Alan Brazil criticises Oleksandr Zinchenko despite Arsenal win

Zinchenko has come in for a lot of criticism of late. And Mikel Arteta has seemingly not always been happy with Zinchenko in recent weeks. But he deserves real credit for having the idea to act so quickly and set up Jesus.

Nevertheless, speaking on talkSPORT (broadcast on 31/1; 6:39), Alan Brazil suggested that he was not impressed by the left-back’s performance over the evening.

“By the way I wasn’t happy with Zinchenko, I thought Ben White had a better game to be honest,” he said.

Left-back not at his best right now

It has to be noted that no player on either side contributed more key passes than Zinchenko. According to Whoscored, he managed four – the same number as both Martin Odegaard and Bukayo Saka.

It is probably fair to say that the £30 million man has not been as impressive this season. But some of the criticism probably stems from the standards he has set during his time in North London.

Zinchenko is so important to the way Arsenal want to play as he needs little invitation to drift inside and act as another midfielder.

And Gunners fans can probably take encouragement from the fact that they did win while the likes of Zinchenko, William Saliba and Declan Rice were not at their best.