3 minute read
Leeds United suffered their third Premier League defeat in a row tonight with a 4-1 defeat against Arsenal at Elland Road.
Goals from Gabriel Martinelli and Bukayo Saka put the visitors 3-0 up before half-time with Raphinha managing to pull one back for Marcelo Bielsa’s side from the penalty spot, only for substitute Emile Smith Rowe to seal the three points for the Gunners with another goal.
In what was yet another disappointing night for Leeds, one player who stuck out for all the wrong reasons on this occasion was Tyler Roberts, who failed to have much of a positive impact on the pitch for his side and arguably let Bielsa down.
In his 90 minutes on the pitch, Roberts only had 42 touches of the ball, five fewer than Leeds goalkeeper Illan Meslier, and he lost possession on 13 occasions.
From an attacking point of view, while the Welshman – who is currently earning a weekly wage of £22k-per-week according to Salary Sport – had three clear shots at goal, only one of them was on target.
Defensively, things weren’t much better for Roberts either after failing to win any of his three ground duels, as well as failing to make even one tackle or interception to try and win the ball back for his side.
This display earned the 22-year-old an overall match rating of 6.2/10 from SofaScore, making him the second-lowest rated Leeds player on the day, highlighting how disappointing he was.
Leeds Live picked up on Roberts’ poor performance against the Gunners by saying that the attacker “time and time again found himself in a position to hurt Arsenal or create something for a teammate and repeatedly chose the wrong option or executed his decision badly.”
Was Tyler Roberts disappointing against Arsenal?
Yes
No
With Leeds having the likes of Patrick Bamford, Dan James and Rodrigo out injured, Bielsa is having to rely on Roberts among others to help the team score goals and get points on the board. However, this performance has shown that the Welshman isn’t capable of stepping up when he is most needed.
Moving forward, with Leeds set to take on Liverpool for their next league game, if players such as Bamford, James and Rodrigo aren’t fit enough to feature, the pressure will be on Roberts to at least deliver a better performance than the one he did tonight.
In other news: Phil Hay shares interesting update at Leeds United that’ll surely have fans buzzing
