Arsenal’s conclusion to this horrendous Champions League group stage format concluded last night and after the initial concern of how the format would play out when we drew away at Atalanta and then ended up losing to a dodgy penalty away at Inter on match day three, we ended up finishing third in the competition, automatically qualified, which means we avoid two additional games and go straight in to the Round of 16 to face either AC Milan, PSV, Feyenoord or Juventus.

On that potential draw first, I think it’s fair to say that given some of the teams in that knockout phase of the competition, we have to be pretty pleased with what we have. None of those teams will be easy (we have been knocked out to PSV before, for example), we will still need to deliver the goods and potentially win in Italy for the third time in asking this season, but there’s a reason we finished third and that’s because we did the business at both ends of the pitch.

Indeed, our back line is one of the reason’s why we were in the position that we’d basically qualified last night, as we hadn’t conceded an open play goal in the competition. Champions League cup runs can be built on a solid back line and that is a positive stat when you think about what might lie before us in future round(s). I suspect, however, that we’ll be needing to have our first choice back line though, because Arteta’s – rightly – rotated back four were to concede the first goal last night and it doesn’t look like a great one when you re-watch it. Don’t get me wrong, it was a decent run from out to in from Danjuma, but it did feel avoidable. Could somebody have closed down the guy who makes the defence-splitting pass? Probably. Could Partey have tracked his man better? Maybe (although we know he’s not really a right back and at 31 he hasn’t got the legs to keep up in a foot race with a 27-year-old forward). Could Neto have stayed in his flipping goal instead of rushing out to no mans land for no apparent reason? Definitely.

He was our oldest debutant in this competition I think and it showed, because after a couple of minutes he’d had a wobbly moment from a back pass and then on 28 minutes I have absolutely no idea why he came rushing out so he was outside of the box when Danjuma struck the ball. It made the strikers job even easier because it gave him a nice big target to knock the ball in to. Had Neto have stayed on his line and come out after the forward had taken a touch or two, he could have set himself in the box and given him a narrower angle for which to score. Instead Neto made the forward’s choices nice and easy and we were behind. We have to just pray that Raya isn’t injured for the weekend because I wouldn’t want to be facing off against City with him in goal instead of our Spanish number one.

We were in control before then (Calafiori just a smidge offside with his tidy finish which would have made it 1-0 to us) and to be fair, even afterwards we were in control too, so it was good that we restored parity just ten minutes later. The penalty was a fairly obvious body check on Partey and again a bit like Neto, I’m not sure what the Girona defender was thinking inside the box, because the way the ball got beyond Partey suggests to me the worst that would have happened would have been he cut it back to an area flooded with bodies. But we got the penalty and as soon as you realise Jorginho is on the pitch, you know you’ve basically got the goal.

And then just four minutes later the new Starboy 2.0 stepped up to put us in front. Yep, it’s Ethan Nwaneri once again and this kid is all kinds of special, let me tell you. Even before the goal, he was causing problem for their left back. He has no problems moving from left to right, from dropping a shoulder to go to the by-line, from operating in small spaces, but what feels like it might become a trademark of his, his goal last night was another peach as he danced across the 18-yard line and rifled it in to the left hand corner. No chance for the ‘keeper and the goal reminded me of the finish he had away at Preston in the League Cup earlier in the season.

That alone probably earned him the man of the match, but his all round performance was that of a man rather than a boy. He is so good at retaining the ball despite being surrounded by defenders. And when you look at his stats for this season already….wowsers…Now, I don’t want to get caused of putting too much pressure on this kid, especially as I’ve just labelled him ‘Starboy 2.0′, but what he’s putting up in this debut season is something else. Saka came in to a slide struggling and as a left back, so the comparison can’t be exactly the same, but that season he got four goals and 11 assists in 39 appearances. Ethan has six goals in 21 appearances. He’s contributing, he’s an important player and during a time in which we have been looking around for creativity and end product, in the month of January alone he’s already delivered two important goals for us. The temptation for Arteta after that performance has to be to see how he fairs against the current English Champions on Sunday and, honestly, I’m struggling to find a case against. The ‘he’s only young’ argument doesn’t work in comparison to the eye test; this kid is going places and we have to hope that we can keep him around as long as possible.

Ultimately it was a perfect night too, because plenty of players were rested and only played token minutes ahead of Sunday’s vital match at home to a City side who scraped in to the qualifying rounds by beating Club Brugge last night. They had to play most of their players for almost all of the game and so I’m hoping that it has a knock on effect for them at the weekend – marginal gains and all that jazz.

More on that in the coming days, but to round us off for today, that news filtering in that we’d bid £60million for Ollie Watkins yesterday. He’s 29, has two year’s left on his deal in the summer, Villa will have to make a decision on whether to offer him a new one and a bumper one, so I can understand why Arsenal had a punt. And if the news also coming out that Jhon Duran is probably offski to Saudi Arabia for big cash wasn’t happening, I wonder if Villa might entertain this offer and give Duran the keys to the Villa attack as an attempted succession planning approach. As an Arsenal fan Watkins would jump at the chance too, but Villa rejected, Duran will be in London today to have a medical and I think as soon as that story emerged on Watkins, I think we can close the chapter on it. Villa won’t sell both, they clearly feel like Duran isn’t as elite as some of his sub appearances have suggested and so they will put their time and effort (money) in to Watkins. You have to say ‘fair enough’ given his goal return. It’s a little bit frustrating that we didn’t make this first attempt a week or two week’s ago, because at least it will give us more time to find an alternative if it’s a definite ‘no go’, but it is what it is I suppose.

That’ll do for today. No point over-analysing a transfer that has about 1% chance of happening now, I don’t think. I’ll catch you all tomorrow.