Spent the weekend at an AirBnB which had it’s own sauna, cinema room, jacuzzi and pool this weekend, so when I woke up yesterday having watched the game on m iPad, I couldn’t really be arsed to pen any thoughts. Why ruin a perfect Sunday ahead by re-living the memory, eh?

A new week also brings new football too, so rather than pour over that result – which I will say a few words about in a bit – I’d rather focus on the fact that us playing tomorrow night is a bit of a touch, really. Shaktar come to visit, Mikel will therefore speak to the press today, so hopefully we can put the bad taste of a defeat behind us.

It wasn’t the best of weekend’s though, given how City scraped a win with a contentious goal, Liverpool also winning, meaning we’ve fallen further behind them as a a title chasing duo and Villa’s win has put them level on points with us. It was a shoddy performance on Saturday, compounded by the penalty and my hope is that we will see consistency about decisions like that one to send Saliba off. I can kind of live with it being a red card, with the benefit for a couple of days to think about it; a shocking kick from Trossard for which I suspect he’ll have been a bit sheepish about on the coach journey home, then a clumsy challenge by Saliba and the game hits a game state that we’re all now becoming very familiar with. Three times in eight games is the sort of rub of the green that could cost titles and, had we have avoided those reds, I’m pretty sure we’d have at least six points instead of two right now as things stand today. Given how recently we saw the importance of every point (last season’s title chase down with City) in this league, being handicapped with a man less isn’t something that we want to making a regular occurrence. And especially when there is so much more of a game to play, which has happened in every one of our reds this season. Rice, Trossard and Saliba were all in the first half, meaning we had to play a lot of football with ten men. Last season Tomiasy was sent off against Palace on 67 minutes, meaning we had just over 25 to hold on to the points. The other sending off was at home to Burnley in which Fabio Vieira went off on 83 minutes, after we were 3-1 up, so a little less of a worry. This season each of those red cards have ultimately cost us points. We had to nip this in the bud somehow.

I did wonder whether I wanted to get drawn in to the debate re: Tosin and Jota from yesterday, because the positions on the pitch were very similar to the Saliba situation and Arne Slot referenced it in his post match press conference. It’s very ironic indeed that this has happened in such proximity to the Saliba outcome and at first I felt a little triggered after saying on social media that the Saliba red doesn’t happen to any other team. It felt like it at the time, but there is a second Chelsea player who looks very close to Tosin and so I can’t for sure say that it is a carbon copy of the decision. I still do feel like we are refereed differently but let’s face it, in the 30 minutes in which we started the game, we didn’t look great at Bournemouth as it was. We had a little more of the chances and a little more of the possession and touches in their box, but we didn’t look very cohesive to me and so I think Arteta will also be looking at how the team reacts after starting off the performance in the way they did.

We haven’t been very fluid so far this season at all. The defence has broadly (when 11 on the pitch) coped with the opponents we’ve been up against, but we haven’t exactly clicked repeatedly going forward yet. It all feels a little disjointed and ‘bitty’ at times to me. Southampton was fine at the back other than one moment in which they scored from their only chance. But until that point we’d struggled with our finishing. Leicester we were two up at halftime but it felt like it could have been five or six. The City game you have to view in isolation given the opponent and how we were down to ten men and in the game against the Scum we didn’t really create loads of clear-cut chances. Brighton we created chances before and after the red card but didn’t finish them off, Villa the same until later in the game and I thought Wolves at home looked a little laboured. So I do think that we are going to need to click in to gear soon if we don’t want to be cast adrift in this attempted title race. Some of it is down to the injuries and suspensions, I think, because we seem to have had to rotate in every single match already this season and it feels like we haven’t had a fully fit first team for ages. Timber, White, Tomiyasu, Calafiori, Zinchenko, Merino, Rice, Odegaard, Saka, Jesus, Martinelli – all of these guys have had games where they’ve been missing or suspended, which I suspect has had an impact to building those natural relationships back on the pitch again. But when you’re competing for the sorts of things we’re competing for, you can’t afford slow starts to seasons. I know the opponents have been quite tough so far and we’ve got another little death run already coming up with Liverpool, Newcastle and Chelsea on the horizon, so perhaps those games will naturally be a little tighter and chances are at a little more of a premium, but we need to find a formula of winning these games – and doing it without going down to ten men!

The Shaktar game tomorrow provides an opportunity to get a win on home soil before the Liverpool game against a Champions League opponent who lost their most recent outing in the competition 3-0 to Atalanta. That means we have the chance to get the winning feeling back and I hope Mikel is stressing the importance of that, because Liverpool will be rocking up feeling very confident given their current standing in the league and the fact they managed to dispatch Chelsea yesterday. Say what you like about their fixtures, but momentum in football is massive and there’s no doubt their start to the season has enabled them well; they will be coming to us with a bit of swagger about them, whereas we will still be licking our wounds a bit.

That’s it from me for today I think. Back tomorrow with a match preview. Catch you then.