Arsenal suffered a bruising night in Paris as their Champions League dream came to an abrupt end against PSG - and one French publication has now slammed several stars in their player ratings
French outlet L'Equipe have rubbed salt in Arsenal's wounds by hammering their players in the wake of their defeat against Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League semi-finals on Wednesday night.
Luis Enrique's men cantered to a 3-1 victory on aggregate after weathering an early storm from the Gunners, who lost last week's home leg 1-0. They will go on to face Inter Milan for European glory later this month while Arsenal are now destined to end another season without a major trophy.
Although Arsenal started like a house on fire in the French capital, PSG didn't look back after taking the lead against the run of play through Fabian Ruiz.
And L'Equipe, the publication notorious for their brutal player ratings, have given the same treatment to an Arsenal side who were fancied by many to go all the way after battering Real Madrid over two legs at the quarter-final stage.
Thomas Partey, Myles Lewis-Skelly and Mikel Merino all received threes with the paper saying of Lewis-Skelly's performance: "So brilliant in the quarter-finals against Real, so unremarkable in the semi-finals. He lost too many balls, including one very close call, and above all, he conceded a penalty for a handball that could have put an end to the Gunners' last hopes."
The majority of the Gunners received fours including captain Martin Odegaard, whose 'insufficient' performance was, brutally, actually deemed an improvement from his showing in the first leg.
David Raya was the highest rated Arsenal player at six following his penalty save but there were more shots in the chamber for Mikel Arteta, who was also handed a four and accused of being responsive rather than proactive in his bid to turn the tie in Arsenal's favour.
"It feels like he had a plan A but no plan B, unable to adapt to PSG's opening goal," L'Equipe said of the Spaniard. "He waited until Paris were awarded a penalty (69th minute) to make his first changes while his team was struggling, but he failed to give his team a second wind."
Despite coming up short, Arsenal midfielder Declan Rice - who was rated a 5 - felt the Londoners were unfortunate to not get anything more out of the game. He told TNT Sports: "I thought we were dominant today, if we score one of them chances in the first 15-20 mins then the game changes.
"Two mistakes from us and two goals for them. We gave it everything, it wasn't meant to be. You're in or you're out in this competition. Over the two legs we could've scored more goals but Donnarumma has been unbelievable and it wasn't meant to be.
"Sometimes you have to lose a few in order to win and overcome setbacks to grow as a player and as a group. We're going through that at the moment in terms of the league and Champions League - we've been here back-to-back seasons - we're growing as a team but we need to keep pushing and believing.
"We're absolutely gutted but this doesn't define us, for sure. We'll be stronger with our players back who have been out for a long time."