Piers Morgan hit out at Arsenal for their “pathetic” performance against Brentford and took aim at head coach Mikel Arteta after his side fell to a 2-0 defeat at the Brentford Community Stadium.
Arsenal had been feeling optimistic before their Premier League curtain raiser against Thomas Frank’s side following an encouraging pre-season, but a poor display brought them crashing down to earth.
The Gunners never recovered after falling behind to Sergi Canos’ venomous strike in the first half, before Christian Norgaard took advantage of some shoddy defending to head home the second 15 minutes from time.
Arteta had been left without four first-team members due to injury, with Thomas Partey and Rob Holding the regulars missing out on the opening fixture of the new season.
The Spaniard was then dealt a double blow when key attackers Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette were ruled out through illness just hours before the match.
Arteta had planned to give debuts to new signings Ben White and Albert Sambi Lokonga, but he was forced to use untested starlet Folarin Balogun as the lone striker.
And it was evident that his young side had struggled to cope with the expectation as a more confident Brentford side took their chances with aplomb.
Former Good Morning Britain host Morgan, often a vocal critic of Arsenal’s performances on social media when they lose, was back to his scathing best in delivering a barrage of criticism.
The 56-year-old posted a series of tweets ranting about the Gunners’ “pathetic” performance after a series of defensive mistakes.
“This is pathetic,” he tweeted to his 7.9 million followers.
“We’re being bullied off the park by a team of players who’ve never performed in the Premier League.
“Even by Arteta standards, [this is] a new low. I can’t do this for the next nine months.”
The Gunners struggled to compete with the newly-promoted Premier League side throughout the second half and £50m signing White in particular struggled on his debut.
It was thought that with £75m spent this summer, Arteta could find some improvement on their consecutive eighth-place finishes in the last two seasons.
But when the result was finally confirmed, Morgan could not resist aiming another jibe at the Spaniard — claiming the Gunners have actually regressed over the summer.
He added: “To be fair to Arteta, he did say Arsenal would surprise everyone this season - and they have: we’ve got worse.
Arsenal fans have often poked fun at rivals Tottenham’s poor form during the 2019-20 season when Amazon’s cameras followed them around for the All Or Nothing series.
But this season, the American company struck a deal to follow Arsenal and capture the behind-the-scenes moments.
And after their first setback of the season, Morgan sarcastically claimed he would be “happy” to see what occurred away from the public eye in the dressing room.
“I can’t tell you how happy I am that Amazon are capturing the full horror of this Arsenal debacle on their All Or Nothing documentary cameras,” he wrote.
Arsenal will be keen to quickly turn things around after a night to forget against Brentford.
But Arteta’s men will need to get up to speed soon with fixtures against Manchester City, Tottenham and Chelsea fast approaching.
