Morning all.

Arsenal lost for a second time this season against a Newcastle side who scored once from a brilliant cross and header to match. Gabriel will be feeling disappointed to have let Isak get the better of him I’m sure but sometimes one just has to admire a really good goal. As much as that pains me to admit.

The rest of the game was scrappy really with Howe’s side preventing us from finding any kind of rhythm. Not that they needed to try very hard. Defensively, we coped with the rest of what Newcastle tried but once more, when it came to the attacking side of our game, we were pretty timid. The chances we did create were either dealt with by Newcastle, or messed up by our own players. The closest we came to scoring came from Mikel Merino but his shot was blocked on the goal line.

Our set-pieces, and we had more than a few, weren’t as clinical as usual, in fact they were more often than not, pretty poor, especially from the boot of the usually reliable Declan Rice. Leandro Trossard continued his run of poor form and in hindsight, probably could have done with sitting the second half in the dugout. Gabriel Martinelli, for all his running, looked out of ideas when he was closed down.

But, to single out players is perhaps unfair after a game when no player in red and white were really at it. As for Newcastle, well they got their goal early and that was that. The stopped us from playing our game really well although to be honest, they didn’t have to try to hard as we were making things tough for ourselves. We were pedestrian, we lacked movement and we certainly lacked creativity in the final third yet again.

Arsenal simply aren’t quite the same team without Martin Odegaard, our right hand side isn’t as productive when Bukayo Saka doesn’t have his trusty teammate Ben White behind him and our midfield hasn’t been quite so strong when Thomas Partey has dropped into right-back. These are reasons perhaps but they’re certainly not excuses. As Mikel Arteta said in his post match press conference, it’s his job to bring more creativity into his team.

When the changes eventually came, they didn’t make a lot of difference but to come into a game like that can’t be easy. The tone was long set and it stayed that way. As said yesterday, the Declan Rice header at the end pretty much summed up Arsenal’s performance.

Now is not the time for Mikel Arteta’s players to feel sorry for themselves though, in fact it’s totally the opposite. Of course they will be disappointed, sad even as William Saliba said after the game but coming out the other side of this tricky time is what matters most. How the players as a group deal with the disappointment will decide how this season plays out. They can either shrink or come back fighting and I’m quietly confident we’ll see the latter because this group of players are too good to drift away and out of this title challenge.

As for Mikel Arteta, well I don’t always agree with his decision making and feel that he too slow to make changes when players are clearly struggling with form but that’s just my opinion. To be fair to him, he’s had a lot of injuries to deal with, a lot of decisions against us as a team too but he needs to get this group of players playing better football than we saw yesterday. Oh, and in January, sign a player who can score goals, something the club should have done in the summer. In my opinion of course.

Hopefully we’re over the injuries now and Martin Odegaard will return along with Takehiro Tomiyasu and Kieran Tierney. I think either one of the latter two is a better option at left back than Oleksandr Zinchenko and Tomiyasu is certainly a better choice at right back than Thomas Partey because our number 5 is needed in midfield.

Anyway, Man City were beaten by Bournemouth yesterday and with eleven players!

Next up it’s Inter Milan in Italy. Sofa time…..

Catch up in the comments.

 

 

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