After just a few minutes at St James’ Park I had an inkling that this game was going to be very much a case of Deja Vu for us up in the North East. A bouncing ball in the middle of the park wasn’t won by Partey, Isaak was found in space in behind and Arsenal were – we thought – one down after just a few minutes.

We were – as you and I both know – given a reprieve. A marginal offside call had saved us, but it was the way that we were cut open on a loose ball in the middle of the park that had me the most worried. We looked rattled after only a few minutes and the evening wasn’t going to get any better after that, unfortunately.

Arteta’s naming of the same XI from the weekend kind of made sense. After all, the players had performed so well, had executed his tactical game plan to perfection and City didn’t have an answer. This would be a different game entirely though; Newcastle and their vociferous fans would be loud and would be aggressive and it would call for a different mindset if we were to overcome what was already a pretty slim chance of getting to the League Cup final. But what we ended up getting was anything but what happened last Sunday. For starters, I think Arsenal’s intention was to press high, to try to catch Newcastle out early with a goal by blitzing them, then to take stock of the situation in that first half. Against City we did get that early goal and it enabled us to get our foot on the ball and invite them on to us. It also allowed us to dictate the narrative of the game. But that was a game in isolation; this match had a two-goal deficit to overcome and so I think Arteta and his charges had a mindset that urgency was imperative and we had to ‘get at them’ to quieten the crowd down before we could start to dictate the game.

I think that early goal – even though it was disallowed – rattled our defence though. Because even before Newcastle got the first through Jacob Murphy, we’d seen Saliba and Gabriel wobble on the ball a bit and as Newcastle pressed us aggressively, I was surprised to see how poorly we reacted to it. It’s so strange, because the way we normally play is to invite pressure, invite teams to press, draw them in and then evade the press with good passing into those triangles that get us further up the pitch. But last night we saw players misplacing passes, dallying on the ball, just look generally uneasy and the result was that it emboldened both the Newcastle players and the Newcastle fans.

We know the Newcastle approach. We’ve seen it for the previous three games up there. They press aggressively, they give away ‘bitty’ fouls, they try to break up play and disrupt rhythm. Sometimes within the laws of the game, sometimes without. Sometimes the referee calls them up on it, sometimes he doesn’t. Rotational and repeat fouling is something that happens, Gordon gets away with a few, but as an opposition team you have to deal with it. You have to be up for the counter punch and whereas normally in these types of games Arsenal are, for some reason up at St James’ Park in recent years, we just haven’t been.

I’m trying to put my finger on it. Is it because Eddie Howe has found a blueprint that works against Arteta? Maybe. They’ve tended to get the first goal and that enables Newcastle to sit in a defensive shape, low-block if they need to, then wait to draw us out and counter on us with their rapid transition. And with players as quick and on form as Gordon and Isaak, you can understand why, because they are potent and will punish you – even if they only get one or two chances.

But it’s also in our attacking third that I’ve been really disappointed three times in a row up there now. We created a golden chance at 0-0 with Odegaard and I’m sorry, but if you’ve got the talent in his boots that he’s got, you really have to be burying his chance. Just moments later and we were behind. The difference between the two sides – one finishes its dinner, where the other doesn’t. And all we’ll hear from the media for the next 24-48 hours is how we missed up a chance to bring a forward in this January transfer window.

Except it’s not just the media, is it? Because we’re all doing that too and with Martinelli going off with what looked like a hamstring injury, we find ourselves less than three days past since the ending of the window and we’re already starting to fret about our forward options. We have Nwaneri and by George, we’re all grateful of that, but beyond that we’re staring down the barrel of the washed up Sterling. At this point the best thing about Sterling is that we don’t have to be the ones worrying about how to offload him in the summer – we can just hand him back to Chelsea to be their problem.

Ours right now is how we pick ourselves up from this disappointing performance and defeat, in which every player looked off it last night. Perhaps that’s just the fatigue from a mental schedule. Perhaps we’re going to get a reset from the players as they head off to Dubai once again to get recharged. They need it. We need it. Odegaard even talked about it last night after the game.

And to be honest with you, us fans probably need it too. It’s been a bit relentless of late and it feels like every time we take two steps forward, we have one step back. Arteta needs to get his players on the training ground, he needs to get their heads and bodies recharged, then we go again against Leicester in just under 10 days time.

Back tomorrow with some more thoughts.