Come the final whistle on Saturday, Chelsea stayed top of the table and we suffered our first loss of the season.
Like I’m sure many of you did, I went into the match with both confidence and caution. Confidence because of our fine start to the year, but caution due to the Blues record at the Emirates Stadium.
With the win, Chelsea became the first side to win three games at our new (ish) ground, maintained their unbeaten and asserted themselves as genuine title contenders.
But enough of them lot and more on us. My first thought is that we didn’t play overly well.
I’m not sure what it was but something seemed to be missing, we saw a lot of the ball, had a number of attacks and most of the time we defended soundly.
However two lapses cost us and we lost.
If Steve Bould had any hair, surely he would have ripped it all out after watching the type of goal that we conceded last year hit the back of our net twice.
Koscielny didn’t have a particular great afternoon after his superb display against Manchester City, and I thought it was rather harsh leaving out the calm Per Mertesacker who has been phenomenal so far this campaign.
But that’s all it was, just two mistakes. It’s nothing to warrant crying for Wenger out, and sobbing after the loss of RvP, it’s a blip, we’ll come back stronger.
However, I do feel that we missed the presence of a genuine centre forward whether that be Olivier Giroud or Lukas Podolski being moved into the middle.
Gervinho did ok I thought, but too many times we hovered around the edge of the box and failed to penetrate through a solid Chelsea backline. We were often forced into taking shots from range, in particular with Santi Cazorla and Aaron Ramsey, who I feel neither had the greatest of matches.
We looked more of a threat when big man Giroud came on and we actually made Petr Cech work hard to keep us out with a number of great saves.
I thought Giroud made a difference. He forced Cech into making a great stop, albeit via a deflection, but he also blasted a shot into the side-netting after some nifty build up work.
Podolski too looked a danger when he shifted into the middle at times before he was subbed off, but overall I thought we lacked the penetration for too much of the game.
But never mind, there is nothing we can do about it now. We just need to focus and come back stronger, it’s still very early on in the season and we need to concentrate on the Champions League this week before travelling to West Ham United next weekend.
Matt Cotton
Wenger and the board must wake up if you sell you must replace with profits announced last week there is 50 million plus in the bank.We are an Arteta Injury away from disaster.Lessons have not been learned.3 Players needed In January Experienced keeper M,Villa and Llorrient