The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Uriel La Roza did not need any: 7.66, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Damián Pérez was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
21 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
19 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
78 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Arsenal lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Arsenal will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Arsenal this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Defensive actions: 19, and a clean sheet at the end of it. A centre-half's best afternoons look like nothing happening, which is precisely the point.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Words at Arsenal training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Lucas Mihovilcevich is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
In brief
Player ratingsA defender's afternoon for Iván Peralta
85 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Arsenal lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Arsenal can pretend not to have heard.
There were 7 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Uriel La Roza, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 8.41
A mark of 8.41 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Arsenal this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
At 21 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
99 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Arsenal lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Arsenal this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
106 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Arsenal lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
31 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.