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Martin Keown ripped into Arsenal’s Dani Ceballos after his performance on Thursday night in the Europa League.

The Gunners were beaten 2-1 last night by Villarreal in the first leg of a Europa League semi-final tie.

Spanish club Villarreal, who are managed by Unai Emery, raced into a two-goal lead inside the opening 30 minutes to seize control of the two-legged tie.

£52,000-a-week midfielder (Spotrac) Ceballos was then sent off early in the second half after picking up a second booking.

However, Mikel Arteta’s side do have an away goal thanks to Nicolas Pepe’s penalty to take into next week’s home leg against Villarreal at the Emirates Stadium.

Arsenal-supporting pundit Keown delivered a crushing verdict on Ceballos after his latest Gunners performance.

“Ceballos in that midfield, he’s made a catalogue of mistakes in this competition so far,” Keown told BT Sport 3 (10:05pm, 29 April).

“I do feel that he was unlucky for the second booking but his reward for those mistakes was a start in the semi-final and he looked like he was out of his depth today.”

TBR’s View:

Unfortunately, Ceballos was in the spotlight yet again this season in an Arsenal shirt for all the wrong reasons.

The 24-year-old Spaniard has made several high-profile errors during the European competition en route to the semi-finals, and he will be relieved his team responded by scoring an away goal after going down to 10 men.

He’s approaching two full seasons with Arsenal on loan from Real Madrid, and it feels like erratic moments overshadow the success the central midfielder has had.