Let’s get right into it, the reason Emery played Mikhi is because he didn’t know the player was heading out to Roma on loan. The player found out AFTER the game.

I don’t really care either way, why would you bring on Mikhi regardless?

It seems more and more like young kids are being pushed onto Emery.

Telling that the manager had to be convinced by the stats guys at Arsenal that LT was a better choice than Nzonzi. Great to see that someone at the club was taming Emery’s inner Tony Pulis.

Ultimately, there’s no point in trying to flog a dead horse. I understand why Emery would rather bet his house on experience, but for me, when that experience consistently lets you down, why not try something a little more unpredictable… something that actually has something to prove.

There are now no excuses for Reiss. He is going to have rough games, but he has to deal with that. He has to build mental toughness quickly and he simply has to take his chances. A few goals under his belt or an elite assist should have him on his way.

He needs to be the best he can be and leave himself no excuses come the end of the season. I guess the folly of youth is you don’t realise that a little more focus can have a chain effect on your life. I’d imagine the worst thing for an elite athlete is think they blew a football career because they were chasing babes in Basildon.

Same goes for ESR, Gabriel and Saka. Take those opps and make it impossible for the manager to ignore you… just like Matteo and AMN did last season.

Granit Xhaka had a message for the haters (worst turn of phrase ever).

“Of course critics are always here. The North London derby, I think we had a good game. I made a mistake with the penalty but if you saw the game, we could have won.

“We had a lot of chances but this is football. Nobody speaks about the chances, nobody speaks about how many we missed. They always speak about the mistakes.

“This is part of football.”

Come on Granit, the only reason we talk about your mistakes is because they are so regular.

I think we all understand that we’re overweight, slow and shite at sport… but come on, if Fat Dave in your Sunday League team did that, he’d be getting a bus back home and you’d piss in his kit bag.

What, too far?

Another player who made a mistake was Bernd Leno. It looked like he was caught off guard by the lacklustre pace of the Lamela strike and couldn’t change his palm to a catch.

‘I think the first goal was a little bit unlucky. I couldn’t catch the ball completely and then I tried to get up but Eriksen scored, it was unlucky but that is the life of a goalkeeper. For me it was then like the team, I had to stand up. It is not a big problem just because we conceded a goal, I had to stay positive and I thought after that I did a very good job.’

He’s a great shotstopper and he did a good job the rest of the game, but he really needs to have a few quiet games. He was bullied by Burnley and my worry is that’s an opening for teams like Watford to target him. The toughest thing for a keeper in the Premier League is the highballs, namely because you get charged down by thugs. He’s clearly a confidence keeper, I just hope he doesn’t have a dip like he did at his last club.

I have faith…

What I am wondering is whether Emery is going to persist with the 3 man midfield that looks basically like three holding midfielders. The decision to do that doesn’t seem to be paying any dividends. We give up creativity moving forward and we’re viscous through back. Quite incredible how easy our three holding players were to play through in the first half.

There needs to be a solution. I think having a more attacking threat could help. Still not quite sure what the best midfield is, but it’s looking more and more like LT, Matteo and Ceballos… though I wouldn’t be shocked to see Willock given more regular game time. Emery likes powerful players and you’d be hard pushed not to feel that Willock is stronger than LT.

We’ll see though… right, that’s all I have.

Big love to Alex Cutter from the comments. A laser-focused beast to everyone, always on the edge of a ban, long may that continue. x

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