The wife was out seeing some old workmates yesterday. So, being left alone with a bottle of Albarino and a couple of cans of Cruzcampo, I settled in to an early kick off in the hopes that we could potentially put the tie to bed.

The problem is, it takes two to tango, and Bayer Leverkusen were in no mind to make it an open and easy game for us.

I guess where I’m at this morning after that 1-1 draw in the Bayer Arena, is that it’s a decent draw and leaves us with the minor advantage of home soil for what effectively becomes a one-off knock out game now. That’s how I reflected on it to The Management when she came home last night and said “What does this mean now?” after I told her the result. With the abolition of the away goal rule, the home leg for us becomes the equivalent of an FA Cup round; there’s no need for mental gymnastics, or the psychology of being a goal or two up – it’s just them versus us and if it’s level after 90, then we go to extra time, followed by pens.

And if you look at the way we played in the main last night, you probably have to say “I’ll take that”. We weren’t great. We had our passing structures all set up, Eze was finding pockets of space deeper, getting on the ball. But I suspect that’s exactly what Bayer wanted. He’s not a guy who dictates from deep. He’s somebody who comes alive in the final third and last night he was probably a little too far from it, a little too often, for my liking.

I thought he had a decent-ish game though, which cannot be said across our front line. Martinelli had the best chance right up until Kai put the ball on the penalty spot to draw us level late on in the game, but his shot off the bar was about it from the Brazilian; it was another frustrating one in which I don’t think he beat his man often enough (when he did he drew a yellow card from the Leverkusen right back, but he never built on that, which is disappointing), and spent a lot of time checking back and slowing the play.

Big Vik started brightly and used good strength within a minute to leave Andrick on a yellow (who might have seen red if his body check on the same Arsenal player would have been 30 minutes later instead of three) early on and he had a couple of early touches and lay-offs that I thought meant we might get one of the better performances from the Swede, but that soon faded away.

But the biggest surprise of the night was just how poor Saka was. In fact, he was so poor, that people on my social media timeline were questioning whether he was fit or not. The manager never alluded to anything in his post-match press conference, and in fact, he even hinted (or so I thought) at the reason Madueke came on being the poor performance of the Starboy. It was just so odd; he never beat his man, his passing was off, he was slowing the play down and it seemed like he’d run out of ideas. One or two of us have touched on the fact we need him to step up, because he’s our best player, but this season has so far been quite underwhelming. And yesterday’s game felt like it was a point in which more people are going to start questioning him.

His replacement Madueke made an instant impact. He was beating his man, which is his bread and butter, and the move which led to the penalty was excellent. I thought the pen itself was super soft, although in real time it looked like a stonewaller to me, but when you see the replay you’re getting quite annoyed that’s it’s given if it’s against you. Mind you, the referee was terrible all night and gave silly fouls and ridiculous yellows all night. Zubimendi’s and Havertz’s were a case in point; how on earth Kai got booked for standing his ground in the penalty box is beyond me. So maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised that he gave that penalty.

It was a relief to bag it, and kudos to Kai for the cajones to step up against his old club and deliver, but it felt like we’d got away with that draw in the end. The stats and efforts overall tell of a game pretty evenly matched though, so perhaps the draw is just the footballing gods appreciating and recognising that neither side really deserved it on the night. Leverkusen caught us cold at the beginning of the second half with their corner goal (Jover will have them all in doing lines on the blackboard this morning, for sure), we caught them out late with a bit of trickery from Noni. One cancelled the other out and we go again on Tuesday evening next week at The Emirates.

I’m not really sure what else there is to reflect on in that game. It wasn’t a classic, Bayer were set up to contain us and then hit us on the counter with Kofane proving a handful for a surprisingly shaky looking Saliba and Gabriel, but they didn’t really have a ton of work to do when you think back over the chances created. Raya made one worldie of a save, I’ve mentioned Martinelli’s crossbar challenge effort, but other than that I can’t remember either side creating a ton and deserving to win this game outright.

That needs to change in six days’ time though. And we need to see a better performance on Saturday too.

Back tomorrow as we look ahead to that tricky one against Everton.