Even though the match ended over 12 hours ago and I have had time to digest the result and going’s on in the 1-1 draw at Stamford Bridge, I’m still not sure how I feel about it, you know.

At the beginning of the day if you’d have offered me a draw I’d have taken it; another tough away ground ticked off, with an injury-hit team, against an in-form Chelsea side who with home advantage would have had their tails up. But when you are up against a side who are down to ten men for two-thirds of a game, you have to be looking at it as one that should be won. This article is a little old, but look what a difference it makes to the probability of winning a football match when your team has a man advantage. Your likelihood of winning goes on average from 23.5% to 57.4%. Of course I know there are caveats; if you play against 10 men for the last two minutes of a game it is different, plus if you are already losing it is different, plus the quality of your opposition makes it different. But as a general rule when you have that advantage that we had, you have to try to go for the game.

And I feel like we perhaps weren’t quite at it enough yesterday to ‘go for it’. I think there’s a culmination of factors there:

  1. Very intense week of football in which we’ve played three intense football matches against fierce rivals in one way or another
  2. Injuries to yet more players meaning more rotation needed
  3. Playing against a team who have had plenty of practice being down to ten men
  4. Sometimes things just don’t click

And on that last point, I don’t think you’ll see any Arsenal fan disagreeing that it didn’t quite click yesterday. There was plenty of misplaced passes in that first half and in the second when we had control and the dominance you’d expect, we just didn’t pick the right pass, find the right angle or deliver the right moments to win it. We did at least have one moment to bring us back level after Chelsea scored from a corner (they’re good at that too, by the way), but other than that I don’t feel like Sanchez was really tested enough in the second half. On Chelsea’s goal, it’s a flick on that evades everyone and I know I’m old fashioned, but come on, put a man on the bloody post. We never do it, we will never do it, we are so good at set-pieces that who am I to be moaning about something like putting players on posts, but were there somebody there, they’d have nodded it away relatively easily.

Having the ignominy of being behind to ten men was bad enough, but the fact it was that horrible football club Chelsea was maddening, because those horrible home fans suddenly found their voices. And we had to find a moment of magic to bring ourselves level, which we did just 11 minutes later. Saka’s ball to Merino’s head was perfect and this guy Mikel proved once again just how valuable he is. Honestly guys and gals, we might just be at the point in which he has to start ahead of Big Vik, even though the Swede got on and is now fit enough to play more minutes. In the middle third of the pitch I find Merino a bit ‘meh’, but when he is in the opposition penalty box he comes alive. To be fair to him he’s good in our box as well, often heading away balls in on things like corners and free kicks, so his value is clear for all to see at the point ends of the pitch.

He was the guy involved a fair bit on the day, as it was he who had the Caicedo reducer on him in that first half to get himself sent off. It was a nasty one, it could have been an ankle-breaker, but eventually the right decision was reached and thankfully, Merino was fine afterwards. Taylor, having spent most of the first half happily dishing out yellows to Arsenal players in a bitty first half that was start-stop because of the fouls, finally had to send off a Chelsea player – Marc Cucurella seemingly a guy who had an invulnerability chip that he’d played to the ref before kick off.

So at that point you’re tuning in to the second half expecting us to press our feet down on Chelsea’s necks. But it never really happened. I suppose we should give some credit to them because they were a threat on the counter and I thought Reece James was a big part of that (as did most who watched), but Arsenal should have done more with the ball. We just had too many players who let the game pass them by, like Martinelli, Eze and I think Saka too had his radar off. He got the assist for the goal, which is great (especially for my Fantasy Premier League team), but I expected us to press home that advantage more than we did, with Sanchez making a couple fo smart saves but nothing major that sticks out to me. The main one that will really frustrate Arsenal fans this morning is the one in injury time, in which Timber took a Hincapie cross off Gyokeres’ head to potentially seal what would have been an amazing comeback and blow the title race apart. Could there have been a call? Was there a call at all? Regardless of that, when they re-watch, I think Timber will be frustrated with that one, but having scored against Bayern in midweek, you can imagine that a god-fearing man like Jurrien would have thought that there was some divine work going on for him to be in that position to score and win the match for his team yesterday.

So I’m back to the start of where I started today’s blog, which is that I still don’t know if I am happy or annoyed at a point. I guess we’ll know more in the fullness of time and if we beat Brentford on Wednesday and then can go to a really tough place in Villa and get a result (Villa, who are in good form too, by the way), then this will be happily consigned to the history books and we can move on. But what the performance did show is that this Arsenal team does have the occasional ‘off game’ in them. Let’s just hope it’s kept to a minimal for the rest of this season.

Catch you all tomorrow with more thoughts, or you can come and join us at 6.15pm tonight for The Same Old Arsenal pod.