A VERY bad day at the office for The Arsenal

That was the worst Arsenal performance I’ve seen in nearly two years. It was so bad that I’d describe my feelings as stunned rather than ragingly angry.

Arsenal put in the kind of display yesterday that makes me think that they all went out on the lash on Friday night. Passing was off, movement wasn’t great, intensity wasn’t there and for a team who have become masters of figuring things out and having an answer to an opponent, Arsenal just had no idea how to deal with Brighton’s press and intensity. It was absolutely abject, and Arteta will be giving them all a reality check at Sobha Realty tomorrow when they all do a debrief. I know they’re all going away with their international teams now, but that kind of game, like it unfolded yesterday, kind of makes me think that Mikel might call up the managers of the respective international sides and say “listen, I’ll send them across to you, but you’re going to need to give me an extra 24 hours, because I’ve got some things to say and some hard truths to lay down before the report for duty”.

Arteta said afterwards that he knew from the first throw-in that this was going to be one of those games, and if that really is the case, then he might have to take a portion of the blame for yesterday’s car crash too, I’m afraid. Because it was clear what Brighton were going to do: high press, commit bodies forward, push everyone on to us, and stop us from playing out from the back. After 10 minutes you could see that, so from that moment on we should have just gone long. Irritatingly, if it was like five-a-side and you can have rolling subs, the move should have been to have Raya distribute long, get Merino on the pitch and win headers, and probably also Zubimendi on for Bruno, who had an appalling first start in an Arsenal shirt in the Premier League. In the first half alone, he was guilty of some real howlers, but it wasn’t just him alone, because the whole team had been infected with some kind of passing JuJu; Raya in the first 15 minutes couldn’t find a man, it seemed, and given that just a week ago we had the world lauding him as the best ‘keeper on the planet, this was the kind of display that would bring anyone back down to earth.

From goalkeeper to striker, we were just crap. In fact, let’s go through them all:

1. Raya – talked about his distribution; it was pants, but he probably also should have saved at least one of those long-range shots. If you’re going to call yourself the best in the world, you’re probably pulling off saves for one of those.
2. Timber – again, lost focus once or twice, and there were a couple of big switches where I just couldn’t see him in the picture frame when the left winger picked up the ball.
3. Konsa – no massive howlers that I can remember, but was part of a disorganised defence, and that is uncharacteristic of this Arsenal team.
4. Gabriel – poor at closing down shot efforts and didn’t look like himself at all
5. Calafiori – same as Big Gabi on that closing down, and we never really got to see his marauding in attack. Defensively, he looked wobbly too.
6. Bruno – Don’t know what happened to him yesterday, but some of his passing was the worst in the whole team
7. Saka/Tzolis  – one half chance but Saka was pretty anonymous. I’ve lumped both wide forwards together here, because it felt like they both had similar performances. On a day when them being an out-ball from deep and space being there to have a run, neither did nearly enough to be an option
8. Odegaard – this was a return to those Odegaard games in which, for some reason, he drops into the back four to collect the ball and becomes busy but ineffective for the whole game.
9. Havertz – no change all day, missed a sitter later in the game, and it’s the kind of performance that I worried we’d get when we signed him. Thankfully, my worries have – for the most part – not come true. But that felt like a Chelsea Havertz performance.
10. Rice – bit like Odegaard – busy but crap.

My hope now is that this game is a wake-up call. Arteta talked about that afterwards. Everyone has spent the first part of this season talking about how great we are, how we’re going to win the Premier League at a canter, how there is nobody that can touch us. Well, by the time this day is done, we’ll have Man City sitting top on five wins out of five (they’ll beat a Sunderland side who had all the emotion from their first European game at home on Thursday night), and maybe the talk can all turn to them. My hope is that this shakes this Arsenal team to the core and that we don’t see another half-hearted performance like we did yesterday. And yes, it was half-hearted, because you can’t blame fatigue. We rested so many of our players in midweek, so the majority of those boys out there got a solid week between games (Raya, Timber, Calafiori, Rice, Saka, Havertz), so there can’t be any excuses on tiredness. Brighton were better; they were supercharged, they came with their A-game, and they delivered a sobering schooling. And those Arsenal players, as well as us fans, need to take our licks today.

We’ll of course, all stew on this for a bit, but part of me thinks that this horrendous international break might now be good. By the time we play Leeds 27 days from now, it’ll almost feel like the season has started up again. That’s absolutely fine by me. Let’s all go away, reset, then come back fresh and excited for a new reboot of this season.

But we can’t see another game like that again at all. Not if we want to be fighting for this title again.

Back tomorrow with some more thoughts. Going to do a Same Old Arsenal pod with Amanda in a bit so join us here if you’re around. Think we’re going live at 9.45am UK time.