Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang helps Arsenal past Vorskla in Europa League but two late consolation goals sour win

The puzzle for Unai Emery over the next 48 hours is deciphering just how much of this emphatic victory was down to Arsenal’s incisiveness, and how much was instead down to Vorskla Poltava’s sheer ineptitude. In the end it somehow finished 4-2 as the Ukrainian side plundered two late consolation goals, but in reality Brentford will pose a far sterner test in the Carabao Cup next week.

Exactly how much those two goals should be allowed to tarnish this otherwise dominant performance will largely come down to whether you are a glass half-full or half-empty sort of spectator, and how much weight you afford the group stages of the Europa League. Something that most certainly was half-empty was The Emirates: Emery has a real job on his hands if he wants to rally supporters behind the kind of cup run he frequently enjoyed at Sevilla.

“We need this competition,” he insisted after the match. “And so we need to show our supporters that we are excited for this competition. We want to play well in the Europa League and I am sure the fans will begin coming little by little. We have to work hard to bring them here.”

Emery began his campaign to convert Arsenal’s fan base to the wonders of Uefa’s European hinterland by naming a starting XI strong enough to effectively dash any hopes Vorskla had of pinching a point before they had even stepped out onto the pitch. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang retained his spot in the starting XI, rapidly justifying his inclusion with two wonderful strikes. Danny Welbeck also advanced his claim for a first-team spot with a second-half header, while Mesut Ozil crowned his cameo with a confidence boosting goal.

This was also an opportunity for Emery to place three of his summer signings under the microscope, with Lucas Torreira, Stephan Lichtsteiner and Bernd Leno all handed full debuts. Of the trio it was Torreira who most impressed, the copy books of Lichtsteiner and Leno both blotted somewhat by Vorskla’s late rally, which never came close to changing the result but definitely managed to sour it.

“We are happy because we wanted to win our first match in this competition in front of our supporters, but we want to be competitive for ninety minutes and in the last twenty we conceded too many chances,” Emery later admitted. “We need to improve this and this is our disappointment today.”

That the Ukrainians even managed a goal — let alone two — is damning of Arsenal’s capacity for frustrating moments of defensive slackness, given the guests arrived at The Emirates with the clear intention of spending the vast majority of the match with eleven men determinedly entrenched behind the ball. And so it was rather ironic that Arsenal’s vaguely comical opening goal came as a direct consequence of one of just a handful of exploratory sorties forward.

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You could at least see what Dmytro Kravchenko was trying to do: dummy a short pass from out wide to allow Volodymyr Chesnakov to take a potshot from the edge of the area. The only problem was he didn’t think to glance over his shoulder first. Whoops. Instead there was Henrikh Mkhitaryan lurking with intent, releasing Alex Iwobi down the left. Iwobi quickly squared the ball and Aubameyang was left with a routine finish.

Aubameyang was the match’s standout performer, along with tick-tock Torreira, whose sheer relentlessness alongside Mohamed Elneny meant Mkhitaryan and Iwobi could spend pleasantly long periods ambling forward. The pair combined once again for Arsenal’s second. This time it was Iwobi who teed up Mkhitaryan, with Welbeck on hand to glance his cross beyond Bohdan Shust.

Just moments later Arsenal had their third, the pick of the bunch. Again there was a element of hapless between-the-legs fortune — as Artur clumsily stepped over Aubameyang’s heavy touch — but there was nothing lucky about the finish, rifled into the bottom right corner. Emery allowed himself a fist pump, before immediately withdrawing the goal scorer and Torreira.

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On ran Ozil to make an immediate impression. There is no danger of his goal ever earning a place on his personal highlight reel but it at least gives the German something to smile about at the end of a difficult summer. He had Lichtsteiner to thank: the Swiss looping a high ball across the face of goal which Ozil was on hand to nod into the net.

But this is Arsenal. And it did not take long for 4-0 to become 4-2. A shoddy Vorskla consolation goal was not a matter of if but when, with Lichtsteiner failing to clear a set-piece and Chesnakov opportunistically lashing the ball home. Leno blew out his cheeks as he turned to pick the ball out of his net, and was forced to do the same thing again moments later, when Vyacheslav Sharpar got ahead of Guendouzi to add another with a thunderous strike.