Sometimes when I watch Arsenal, I just have that feeling of “oh no, this is going to be one of THOSE games” and after we’d created a couple of good chances before Newcastle got their first goal, including Martinelli crashing the ball off the post, I started to have that feeling.

It’s the feeling that we’re going to have all of the ball, we’re going to dominate territory and possession, the opposition are going to be ruthless and score from the little they create.

And that’s exactly what Newcastle did last night.

To be fair, they looked good in the first half I thought. You can tell they are a confident team who are on a winning run. Conversely, we looked like a leggy team who are needing a trip to Dubai sooner rather than later. There is no time for that this season though. Yesterday night’s defeat to Newcastle was a tale of key narratives and a microcosm of our season; we created enough chances to win the game and had some real sitters (how does Havertz miss his chance? How does Timber blaze over from his header inside the box?), but we lacked a real killer. Our opponents had one in Isak who was red hot and took the few chances he got. He’s a very good footballer and was the best player on the pitch last night. Many have said they’d love him at The Arsenal but I still remain sceptical because of his injury record. But he was very fit last night and was very much firing on all cylinders.

Just like at St James’ Park in November. Isak and Newcastle scored with their first attack and then basically did little for the rest of that game, asking us to break them down, wherein we were poor attacking-wise. That’s what happened again tonight.

Trossard is now no longer an end-product machine. Martinelli is good but patchy. And last night I compared Havertz to being more like Bergkamp, than Henry. Of course Havertz is not as good as the great man, but in that Arsenal team Dennis was the creator, the facilitator, the guy who everything flowed through, but he was never a prolific goalscorer. That’s what Havertz is more like. But the challenge we have is that – normally – we have Ødegaard to perform that role and I guess you’d say Saka is more like the killer for us, even though he plays wide right.

We have no Saka for the foreseeable as we know and last night we had no Ødegaard. Well, in body we did, but that was the ghost of Martin Ødegaard playing last night, because he was awful. He didn’t dictate the play, our creative spark never once flowed through him, he was misplacing passes and not covering his usual ground. Perhaps he is still recovering his fitness from the illness he sustained over the Christmas period, but with the benefit of hindsight, we probably should have just sat him down and got another body out there instead.

It wouldn’t have helped, it probably would have looked a bit stodgy and functional, but that’s how we’ve been this season and with Leo looking like he picked up a knock but playing on anyway yesterday, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s now injured too. That’s how our season has gone wrong. I saw somebody describe it as Murphy’s Law (I.e. everything that could go wrong goes wrong) and it feels like we just get that game after game this season. We beat Palace, we lose Bukayo Saka. Raheem Sterling gets injured so we can’t have an option in there. We find Nwaneri, he gets injured after scoring another great goal against Brighton. It feels very much ‘us’ this season if we now find out Trossard is a doubt for the next few weeks.

We miss a spark. I’m getting bored of saying it. I’m sure you’re getting bored of reading it. Earlier in the week I wrote about Liverpool and how in the 22/23 season we went a little too ‘all in’ on our attacking side and then when that dried up, the fact our defence was letting in goals became a problem. Well we had the opposite of that last night, because a defence that normally looks so imperious, looked really shaky. And it’s not like we were makeshift; Raya (poor misplaced pass early on), Timber, Saliba, Gabriel are all pretty much first choice and MLS has made himself a massive shout for that too. We had Partey sat in front of them, Rice and Ødegaard with him, then Trossard, Havertz and Martinelli making up our starting XI. But it didn’t look and feel like the Arsenal I am used to seeing. Our press was patchy, defensively we were shaky when Newcastle pressed us and they also got out of our press really easy too.

It felt like an uncharacteristically six out of ten performance.

If you lose 2-0 at home though you’d expect it to be a three or a four out of ten performance, but actually, we dominated everything. But, as is becoming a familiar tale this season, in their penalty box we were once again found wanting.

Arteta needs to be talking to the club about doing something in the market. It’s about lifting the team as well as the fan base. We’re all looking around for answers but with bodies dropping and form of certain players varying so much from game-to-game and week-to-week, we need more and personally it doesn’t feel like we’re going to get that by looking internally.

I haven’t really talked about it, but you look at our summer business now, with half the season gone, and it’s hardly kicked us on, has it? Calafiori looks good but spends half the time injured, Merino is a functional guy who seems like a decent squad player but not a lot more, Raheem Sterling might as well not have joined on loan, for all the football he’s (not) played. We’ve been used to Arteta and former Sporting Director Edu getting signings right pretty much every season for the last four years. This now feels like they’ve had a summer window in which they haven’t quite hit the mark. Which is a worry.

There is still time though. We aren’t out of anything yet (although I worry that by the end of January we might be), action can still be taken. But will Arsenal do it now? Or keep the powder dry until the summer? For the context of this season, we must all hope it’s the former rather than the latter.

Catch you peeps tomorrow.