It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t scintillating, but boy, it felt good to get all three points on the final whistle last night in Liverpool.

Arsenal came into this game having won one of the last seven at Goodison Park and the hope was that a depleted Everton, in their new stadium, with an Arsenal team who had a week of training under their belt, would control and dominate this encounter.

And when you look at those fist half stats it feels like we did. ‘Control’ is the operative word here rather than dominate, because it was back to an Arsenal team who gave their opponents precisely the square-root of naff all:

  • Zero shots
  • Zero big chances
  • Restricted passing lanes
  • Just two corners.

That was pretty much it from Everton as we dominated possession (65%) and snuffed out any kind of threat the Toffees posed.

The challenge we are seeing with this Arsenal team, however, is that we aren’t creating a ton of chances in attack. We can argue that perhaps that’s the game Moyes wanted and you could see this is an Everton team that restrict their opponents in terms of chance creation (something I spoke about in the blog preview yesterday morning), but I feel like every week we are having the same conversation about our opponents, I.e:

We came across a low block today and <insert team name> were determined to make it difficult for us.

We need to take our chances, that is clear and in the second half Everton were better, pressing a little higher and that enabled us to get a bit more space. Like the Saka chance that was blocked in the box, the Trossard effort he curled onto the post, or the Zubimendi chance that struck the outside, but it feels like that has been a symptom of our play in recent weeks: we just look a little stingy in attack and aren’t always taking our chances.

I think it probably doesn’t help that City are blowing teams away with their scorelines either, although I think they’ve been fortunate in a number of their wins in their current streak. The hope has to be that they falter sooner rather than later, but if you’re watching both of these team at the moment you’re probably saying that it’s more likely to be Arsenal that does that.

I’m sounding a little doom and gloom here I know, so let’s counter that by saying that we are still top and we even have a strikers goal to cheer about, with Gyokeres penalty never going to do anything but hit the back of the net. It is a much needed goal for the Swede and whilst there are still issues with the way he is connecting with his teammates, the one thing you can’t argue about is that he knows how to striker a ball and he knows how to do the business on penalties.

So we’re one-up going into the second half and I was expecting us to really kick on, but it did feel like we retreated a little more than was needed yesterday. However, perhaps that’s just the nervous fan point of view and the trauma of having conceded three 90+ minute goals in our last four matches, because I watched this game round my parents with my brother (West Ham fan) and with 20 minutes to play he was saying “Arsenal are in control” and “all I see is a team not losing the ball and restricting their opponents to basically nothing”. The numbers in that second half bear that out too:

  • 65% possession for The Arsenal
  • Zero big chances for Everton
  • Five shots in total – zero on target
  • Zero corner kicks
  • 150 passes to Arsenal’s 300.

When you don’t get the second goal you always leave yourself open to drama and perhaps we were a little lucky on the Saliba kick that could have led to a VAR penalty, but perhaps this is one of those that could be argued either way and when that happens they do usually stick with the on field decision.

That was certainly a relief, because although the game still had the pattern of us creating the better chances after that incident, I suspect a penalty for Everton would have meant that they would have retreated into their box and made it an even more stodgy game.

Conversely, our penalty was pretty much as stonewall as you’re going to get, which was why I was surprised it took as long as it did. In real time you don’t really notice it, but the second the replay was shown, I think everyone knew what the outcome would be.

That win is the perfect tonic to go into this festive period now. We play Palace in the League Cup on Tuesday night and I really think Arteta needs to be rotating as much as is humanly possible, because the two upcoming league games at home to Brighton and Villa are going to be really, really tough. Arteta has the opportunity to tell a few players to make a case for them starting in the league and so hopefully we get some of that intention in two days time.

Hopefully we also get some good news on Big Gabby and maybe even Kai for Brighton? That would be a nice little post-Christmas metaphorical stocking filler, wouldn’t it?

Back tomorrow with some more thoughts as we build up to Palace in the cup. Speak then.