That was a tough watch yesterday.

Well, I say “tough watch”, but nothing is tougher than seeing The Arsenal lose, so the fact we speak today safe in the knowledge that Arsenal picked up the sixth win of seven so far this season has to be read as something that speaks with a sliding scale. Because let’s face it, we hardly set the world alight on the City Ground.

Now, what we can say, as seasoned watchers of Arteta’s Arsenal, is that this isn’t necessarily surprising news, because last season it was out most frequent scoreline (10 in total, seven in the Premier League). So we know that we win games by low margins. It’s why we place so much faith in our defensive unit. But there certainly won’t be many more 1-0 wins that I think have such a level of ‘mehness’ about them as that one did. Before we get into the detail of that, however, I will say that ultimately winning is all that matters, so this morning I am happy. And if you give me the power to secure 31 more of those in the Premier League between now and May, played in the same style, I’m taking it. But that doesn’t mean we have to completely wall off any kind of feelings about the approach, the style of play, etc.

The side Arteta named was pretty much as I thought it might be, except Arteta actually gave Eze a shot from the start, which proved to be possibly the wrong move. Hooking Eze at halftime feels particularly pointed, and of course Arteta was asked about it and sort of batted it away, but I’ll be surprised if he starts on Wednesday away at Bayern. It just didn’t happen for him, but he wasn’t alone, because I thought after Saka had Williams on a yellow card early in the game, he should have tested him more. I thought Havertz was anonymous. I thought the midfield and defence were fine (one lax Calafiori moment aside that nearly created a big chance), but we seemed intent on slowing the game down to a walking pace. And that makes for a hard watch.

I get it, Forest sat a solid back five into a mid-block, which constricted the space into the middle third of the pitch. They were diligent, they were a tough nut to crack, they executed their game plan to perfection and it meant we struggled. We always do against those low blocks, because we don’t really have the blistering pace up top and the style of play that those types of teams need against them. In those types of games, where you have a team compacting the middle of the pitch, I always feel like you need a fair dose of ‘risk and reward’, in other words, balls from deeper that are floated over the top, with runners in behind. Ironically, that’s what Gyokeres does, and when he came on I thought he did quite well. It’s probably why Eze and Madueke’s involvement in the game felt so chalk and cheese. Eze is not going to run in behind back lines, and he’s not going to take the ball down the line and look to beat his man on the outside; he’s always going to drift in field and that’s where there was no space. Madueke can do the opposite, did do the opposite, and was rewarded for his good performance with an admittedly fortunate deflected strike. Some will argue it is lucky, but so many goals have an element of luck. You can argue that Pascal Gross’ goal for Brighton against us had an element of luck when he scored, as it went in off the post, so I’m not too minded to besmirch Noni’s goal yesterday.

From a statistical point of view, I guess you could say we possibly edged it, but not by a lot. The xG has us at 1.14, whilst Forest finished on 0.90. We had the one big chance where they had zero, and I saw on Sky Sports that they said it was the highest possession we’d had in any game that we’d had in donkey’s years at 74%. Forest didn’t want the ball, and for large parts of this game they didn’t really need it. That was evidenced by the fact that the goal we scored yesterday was the only shot on target we’d had, and they did say in commentary that if the game finished that way, it would be the first time that’d happened to us since before COVID. Such was the ability that Forest had to stifle us, we were just unable to truly have any kind of meaningful impact on Matz Sels’ day.

As I’ve already hinted at, however, perhaps this was always going to be one of those tough games. There are just some grounds that some teams find difficult. For some reason, the Scum always used to be able to get results against City under Pep. Years back, Bolton was a tough place for us, and now it definitely feels like Forest is one of those places. We failed to score in the previous two seasons; we experienced defeat there on the first season they were back in the Premier League, and the scorelines of teams going there this season have all been 1-0. They may be down there in the relegation spots now, but I don’t imagine under Oliver Glasner that they’ll finish there. It was never going to be a Thriller in Manila

But we did break the deadlock eventually; it was a relief to do so, and Arsenal continue to keep pace with Cheaters FC at the top of the league. It’s Everton at home next weekend, to which we can expect to come up against another stubborn back line, but hopefully we can fashion more chances than we did yesterday.

And that’s probably all that needs to be said about that. I don’t think this game will live long in the memory for many Arsenal fans, but the job was done and we move on to the next one. We probably do need to have some concern about how the attack isn’t clicking, but I’m not minded to go in too hard on that just yet. Not today.

We’ll do a pod tonight on the Same Old Arsenal feed if you’re interested, but otherwise, I’ll be back tomorrow as we start to prep for a really difficult one away at Bayern. Catch you then.