How about last night’s action for an eventful evening of European football, eh? Where do we even start???

How about pre-game, when the surprise, shock and outrage of Le Boss’ team selection left some spiralling into a pit of their own melancholy, whilst others were left simply scratching their heads. After all, the line up from Saturday’s game against Southampton can be easily explained by the fact we played our toughest Champions League group stage fixture up first only here days later. 

But Arsène persisted with some and dropped others that we didn’t think would be dropped. “David Ospina in goal you say?” Crazy. “Coquelin and the Ox to continue to start from the off?” Mental. Yet here we were, with a surprising starting line up and if we’re all honest, there must have been few who were surprised with how we started. We were laboured even within the first minute that cost us a goal and if I’m honest I don’t think either of our full backs had a great game throughout last night. Edison Cavani, of all people, remembered he was a striker and scored a decent enough header and you wondered if this would be the night he remembered that he’s a world class striker and cost £50million-odd about four years ago.

No. No her didn’t. Thankfully, because he had a night akin to Giroud’s against Monaco at home a couple of seasons back, and should have buried us last night on his own with all of the chances he had.

That first half was painful to watch, wasn’t it? It was a team who had a structure and purpose – quick press, target Monreal on the left, create space between Arsenal’s lines for PSG midfielders to take up positions in space – it was sadly impressive. They made the pitch look massive when they had the ball, passing into acres each time, then small when they didn’t, pressing us and forcing each of our players into countless errors and mistakes. 

I’d like to say it is easy to see in hindsight that Coquelin and Cazorla wouldn’t work from the off yesterday, but none of us needed hindsight, the manager just set his team up wrong. I’ve been a fan of Coquelin for the last couple of seasons, you’ll know that if you’re a regular reading of my ramblings, but I’m starting to question the value of him being a regular starter at the moment. The way I see it is this: I used to have a Ford Fiesta. It was great. It had Bluetooth when that wasn’t a normal thing, an auxiliary output cable, audio dialling, the works. I had it for six years and never really had any issues with it. Until the Management and I went out and bought our Audi A5. All of a sudden, we realised that whilst we loved our little Fiesta, the Audi was a step up in class. That’s where I’m at with Xhaka and Coquelin. So to see Arsène taking the Fiesta out for a spin on a regular basis at the moment, doesn’t quite make sense to me.

Last night there were a number of occasions where I watched Coquelin just get rolled by an attacking midfielder. If Coquelin is getting rolled, then we need to have a serious think about what he is doing in the side, because it sure ain’t breaking up play on the halfway line.

But perhaps I’m being a little harsh? After all, when the second half started, we looked a better side. And whilst we all know the manager got his selection wrong in the first half, he didn’t immediately change it at half time and we were still better. 

The thing is though, we were even more better when he started to make changes, which only further serves to highlight that the starting XI was just wrong. The Ox had another evening to forget and I’m now at the stage that I think taking him out of the limelight might be better than trying to get him to play his way in to form. It isn’t working and if this continues I fear for his Arsenal career. He was hooked off on 60 minutes again for the second game in a row and Arsène never does that to his players. With Theo out injured yesterday it gave the Ox a shot at another Bayernesque performance yesterday. It never even looked for a second like it would be his night.

The changes of bringing in Giroud, Xhaka and Elneny all worked though, so whilst you have to chastise the manager for his decisions in his team selection, you have to be happy he changed it and we got the point. Had Cavani put away half of his chances though, one suspects such positives would not be drawn for the manager.

Two players who had contrasting games based on expectations of us fans: Ospina and Özil. The former was brilliant. One dodgy pass aside (which also drew a good save to be fair), Ospina was on form and made a number of telling contributions, the most notable for me being the brilliant pat away from Cavani down to his left hand side as he was through on goal. The margins there are so fine between save and penalty, that you have to just applaud his timing. 

Özil however, had a game which was very quiet. He never really influenced at all, things just didn’t go right and whilst I’m not panicking just get, that’s two in a row for our German. I hope he’s ok. He looked pretty miffed when he was brought off last night.

One more talking point before I knock off for the day: those sending offs. I thought Giroud’s was harsh, but why he decided to shoulder-check Veratti when he was already on a yellow is beyond me. I don’t think he was sent off for that though. I think he was sent off for ‘tripping’ Veratti, which was actually as a result of Marquinhos pushing Giroud whilst next to Veratti. So in effect, the PSG is the one at fault and it was he who also caused his teammate to get enraged. Perhaps he’ll learn a lesson now? Probably not.

Anyway, we left with a point that was probably undeserved, but we now have three matches that we need to see as winnable so hopefully we can see Arsenal kick on from here and do the business by finishing top of the group for a change.

Bit of football to be played before that though!

Until tomorrow.