Well Chelski did us no favours yesterday, did they? Just when you are thinking that they could actually be useful for a change and beat the Hammers, they end up going down to a late goal. Frustrating.

What it means for us is that tomorrow is now essentially a must win. The defeat at Old Trafford meant that anything else other than three points tomorrow night will see us start to slip away from a West Ham team who are looking impressive and are also managing the approach to multiple competitions very well indeed. They’ve qualified from their European group with relative ease and have managed to pick up wins against Liverpool and Chelski in the last month or so. This West Ham team under Moyes is not to be sniffed at that’s for sure. They are showing the kind of consistency we are dreaming of, but as yet are unable to do for any length of time.

What I mean by that – in terms of our consistency, is doing it for consecutive ‘parts’ of the season. I don’t know if you feel the same, but this season has felt truncated and put in to little pockets of games for me. There was the first pocket which was the disaster that was the August pre-transfers losses. Then there was the impressive run between the international breaks. now we are in to the third pocket which is the Christmas run up, before moving in to pocket five which will be the New Year and January fixtures without our AFCON players.

And if like me you’re viewing this section of the season as from Liverpool onwards, then it hasn’t been an amazing run and it is why I feel that three points against Everton is all that is acceptable. We’ve lost to Liverpool and United and beaten bottom of the league Newcastle, so a match like Monday night’s game against the Toffees feels like it needs to be one in which Arsenal stamp their authority and show that we are potentially serious about competing at the top of the league. That means our away form has to be better and it means points away to Everton, then Leeds on the 18th, with home games against Southampton and West Ham being ones that simply must be three points. If we play with the same control I thought I saw at Old Trafford, but minus the stupid mistakes and diving in inside the box, then you would hope we have enough to beat Rafa’s Everton.

Everton beat us home and away last season and we cannot have that. We need to go there, play well, and have the senior players step up. Like Aubameyang, for example, who must be getting close to being dropped. His performances against Liverpool, Newcastle and United have hardly been up to scratch and pretty much every Arsenal player is now asking for bench time. This time last season it was Willian who would put in stinker after stinker and I like many others wondered why Willian was the hill Arteta was willing to die on. I don’t think the Auba situation is – or will ever get – as bad as that, but there does come a point in which you have to sit someone on the sides for a bit and say that they need to step up if they’re going to continue to play in the team.

I suspect Auba will be given Monday night to step up and if that doesn’t happen then the dissenting voices will only get louder. We need something from him. And soon.

The problem is – and this is where it is different from the Willian situation – that there isn’t really an obvious replacement to come in and score the goals. Now, I know you’re probably rolling your eyes at me and saying “Martinelli you fool” and maybe you are right, but he’s never played as that central striker and that’s why I think it is going to be tough for him to make the kind of step up we need. He played very well against Man United and therefore perhaps that has given Arteta the licence to be able to justify the inclusion instead of Aubameyang, but to me it feels like a big gamble.

More likely it will be Lacazette that comes in but he won’t get us goals, so it is the responsibility on the wide men to do that and that is a pressure that is quite tough I think. And whilst Balogun looks to be tearing it up in the u23s, we’ve seen in the Brentford game he is perhaps a little short for the big step up and needs a loan for the second half of the season so he can properly ask the question next season. I’m not even going to go near the Nketiah question, because he should be nowhere near the first team with his contract situation as it is. So it is on the young wide players to do the business for us. To be fair to them whilst Auba hasn’t been scoring they have done the business, with Odegaard and Smith Rowe doing it on Thursday night and Saka and Martinelli against Newcastle. But as we’ve already seen this season, we can’t rely on these young lads all of the time. At some stage those older pros need to step up.

Perhaps we might even get a glimpse of a returning older pro tomorrow night too, albeit not a goalscoring one. Granit Xhaka is supposedly improving and if he even makes the bench it will be a boost for Arteta. Yesterday I questioned what we are going to do with Thomas Partey. Maybe the answer will be to slot Xhaka in alongside him? That will be something different that we haven’t seen and as we saw at times last season, I think the two of them work well together. Maybe that can unlock Partey and get the best from him?

We might have to wait a little longer than the Everton game though and so I suspect it’ll be Sambi coming back in, but I’ll leave my speculation on the specifics of the team line up until tomorrow I think.

Until then I’ll leave you pondering on what we do with our striking situation and I’ll catch you in the morning.