It’s a curious thing, is pre season, because you can have your concerns about performances, but not about results. It’s a real juxtaposition to the real thing, in which ultimately the opposite is true.

Due to work commitments I managed to catch from minute 28 of the game against Villareal last night and found myself trying valiantly to find emotions on both sides of the fence – both positive and negative.

I landed on both and as a result this morning I’m not entirely sure how I feel. I think some of the negative stuff is probably predicated on the fact that after the game and this morning as I was brushing my teeth I went on to social media and saw a lot of hand-wringing over the result and performance. Questions were raised about whether the team has regressed, or at least just stagnated, from a tactical point of view. Questions were raised about the form of some players (Martinelli, etc) and I too as a result of reading these comments had some worries that we are not ready. “We need another week” I told myself this morning. That’s because some players clearly look rusty, or haven’t been able to integrate into the team enough yet. Arteta admitted yesterday after the 3-2 defeat that Gyokeres has only had four or five training sessions. Big Gabi looked a little sluggish for their counter-attacking third goal and that’s because he hasn’t featured in any pre season games yet. He got a fair few minutes yesterday and I think he’ll get a fair few at the weekend too, so hopefully that will bring him up to speed, because we’re going to need him at Old Trafford.

From a physical point of view we look a little off in some quarters of the team and clearly the club and players know that, evidenced by the fact that pictures emerged after the game of some of the Arsenal players going out there to do training drills on the pitch after the meaningless penalty shootout was completed. Odegaard was pictured in particular doing a few shuttle runs and clearly he is a man very keen to make sure that physically he is up to speed ahead of the big kick off. I thought he was ok; his shooting boots still need to be re-adjusted, but he was dictating the play and the movement of the ball well enough when he came on, so that’s a positive. I thought Saka was just ‘ok’ too – nothing really special about his performance, but then he can be like that, can our Starboy. And I don’t mean that in a negative way; Saka has always been good at knowing his body and also knowing when to be in ‘rest mode’ in games – it’s kind of a super power for him, because it enables him to flick the switch at any moment. So given this is a friendly and he’s trying to build up his fitness, perhaps he just leant more into that ‘rest mode’ than usual? That’s what I’m hoping, anyway.

I thought Martinelli was ok, he made a few decent runs, put in a good ball in to the back post for Norgaard to score to bring it back to 2-1 before halftime, but some of the head down running was still there. He also slows us down at times when he stops, checks in field and then square passes it. Nwaneri looked lively and had some good movement and Gyokeres had a couple of half-decent efforts as he builds his connections with the team, but he couldn’t quite find the spaces to fashion those big chances. And that’s because the game yesterday had a very familiar feel to it when we think of last season; a team came to the Emirates, scored a goal on the counter (and a second one) and then just dropped into shape looking to hit us with transitional counters. And we didn’t really know how to deal with that low block. It is the ‘final boss’ if you like; the final thing that Arteta needs to ‘unlock’ and as it stands it doesn’t really look like we’ve found an answer. Merino up top certainly isn’t the answer, although Kai missing because ‘he felt something’ isn’t great. Is it just me, or are we getting a lot of that this pre season? Calafiori ‘felt something’ on tour, Leo ‘felt something’ on tour and now that we’re back home, Kai ‘felt something’.

CAN EVERYBODY STOP ‘FEELING SOMETHING’! DON’T TOUCH OR FEEL ANYTHING!

It’s meant that we are only one friendly away from our away match to United and there are still a lot of questions that Arsenal fans are asking. Because of the familiar pattern of yesterday – team comes to the Emirates, sits in shape and catches us on the break (think West Ham last season and the season before) – there’s a fair bit of naval-gazing going on (I am not immune) and I think that’s causing the trepidation for the new season.

I also think the expectations are such that people want to see evidence that Arsenal have solved all of their problems from last season. Got ourselves a striker. Tick. Got an upgrade in that number six. Tick. Lifted the floor of our rotation options to cover us from another injury crisis. Tick. We’ve done everything right on paper, but not on grass and when we’ve managed to get on grass, it hasn’t all clicked. So naturally, those expectations, are suddenly feeling like their being dampened a little bit. 

I am guilty of it too by the way. I spent most of last season cursing the shocking application of rules by the PGMOL and when that wasn’t a factor, I looked at that long injury list we had. It was a comfort blanket to say to myself “if we didn’t have those things out of our control, we’d have competed for the league until right until the end”. But that is naive to think that the team didn’t have flaws in it. And I don’t think they were the obvious flaws that the media portray (“Arsenal need a number nine”). There’s more to be done about the pace of the way we play and how we slow down everything when we are on the ball. Knowing when to slow and when to ‘go’ is key and I’m not sure if we have that balance yet.

What I also think didn’t help yesterday was that defensively we conceded goals that you just don’t see us concede. Kiwior was great at the end of last season but he didn’t cover himself in glory for Pepe’s finish. We seem to be a little lacklustre in closing our men down collectively for their second goal. For the final goal, the back line was so high it would have made Big Ange proud. So the thing that we’re ace at, suddenly didn’t seem to be so good, although we chopped and changed quite a lot at the back (and I thought Mosquera looked very tidy on the ball) so maybe that was a factor.

So it wasn’t exactly the best prep and in front of the home crowd there wasn’t tons to shout about, but at the same time I’m trying to put this in to the ‘pre season fitness friendly’ box. Even if I’d be lying to say that I think there is absolutely nothing to have concerns over.

What about you?