Arsenal: Francis Coquelin insists loss to West Ham was a wake-up call for Gunners

Francis Coquelin believes Arsenal's 2-0 loss to West Ham on the opening day of the season was a wake-up call for everyone at the club.

The midfielder is grateful that the debacle happened as early as in their first game, which gives them the opportunity to buckle up and prepare for the remaining 37 games ahead.

The Gunners put in a languid performance as they failed to create any clear cut chances in the opening half an hour and were undone by a set-piece which saw them go 1-0 down before half time.

New signing Petr Cech misjudged the flight of the ball and was unable to stop it from reaching Cheikhou Kouyaté, who got his head on to the ball and guided it into the net.

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain's mistake early in the second half gave Mauro Zarate the opportunity to make it two, dealing a fatal blow to Arsenal's chances in the game. Coquelin was subsequently taken off for Theo Walcott, with Aaron Ramsey deputising in his position.

The Frenchman revealed that the team is training very hard to come back fighting for their game against Crystal Palace and will try their best to prevent any more mishaps in their quest for their first league title in over a decade.

"It's been a wake-up call for everyone," Coquelin told Arsenal's official website. "Considering the recent results we had before that, going really well in pre-season, it's disappointing and it was not an Arsenal performance.

"However, in bad things, good things can come out too. It's good that it happened in the first game so that now we can pull ourselves together with 37 games left. We've got time to put things right and that needs to start on Sunday.

"Everybody realises that we need to put more in. When you look at different teams I think a lot of them are ready. You look at Manchester City when they played against West Brom, I think they played really good football.

"We need to pull ourselves together and it's going to be a real test on Sunday because Crystal Palace have a really good squad. We know the quality we have and we need to respond straight away. We've been working really hard in training and we need to put all of the training effort into the game," he added.