At this point I’m not really sure what value the analysis will be from a game like yesterday’s turgid 1-1 draw against a terrible Man United side. But I’ll give it a go. Until I can’t be arsed to type anything more. Let’s see how it goes.

Firstly that United side who, surprisingly to me but perhaps not in hindsight, basically played Low Block FC football at home to a side who have been decimated in attack. In that first half United offered essentially nothing. They dropped in to a back five – sometimes a back six, then when they had the opportunity to they lumped it forward vaguely in the direction of Garnacho. They had clearly watched the Everton’s, the Forest’s, as well as other mid-to-lower end of the table teams drop a low block in front of us and remain compact and saw it was the way to go. And to be fair, it worked, because we looked slow, we looked out of ideas and there was no incision or ideas from a side clearly devoid of creativity in the final third.

Odegaard was trying his lobbed passes, which are now starting to annoy me because they don’t work. Rice was probing, Partey was taking too many touches and we weren’t really troubling Onana too much at all really. Which is annoying really because a great ‘keeper he ain’t. On the flanks Trossard was putting in another bang average display and I totally agree with what Cooks said on the Same Old Arsenal pod we did last night – with Leo you either get a really good performance or a poor one. This was definitely the latter, symptomized by some weak efforts from the edge of the box that never tested Onana.

Or corners aren’t working any more either. Sky flashed a graphic up at some stage in the game saying we got something like 12 goals in our first 21 games. Since then it is zero goals and at a time in which you are devoid of players who can make that cutting edge, sometimes you need to have things like set pieces working for you to help unlock a game.

Which is what happened for United. Having done bugger all for the entirety of the first half, of course they would score the goal. And as another example of how this season can get in the bin and how everything has gone wrong, the goal Fernandes scored was done with the advantage of having a wall just over a yard further back than it was supposed to. In a sport in which fine margins make the difference, that made the difference, because even with our tall wall jumping Fernandez was able to predictably find the net. Could Raya have done better? Probably. But we should have done more before that goal was scored to ensure United were on the back foot and behind, so I’m not going to quibble about the fact the wall was a yard further back than it should have been, we should have been better.

And we weren’t. We were slow. We were ponderous. There was little to no movement in behind and United were able to play all of the game with the ball in front of them. It was so tiresome to watch.

The second half got worse, because United actually found space and there were two great saves from Raya, including one clawed off the line, which stopped this from being quite an embarrassing defeat to a terrible United side who, unless they win the Europa League, will be facing up to their worst ever season in Premier League history.

We’ve got Declan Rice to thank for that, on two fronts, really. The goal he scored was a great strike and in off the post is always fun to see. Then at the other end he made a brilliant slide tackle to win the ball and stop what could have been a concession of a goal from Hojland. He stood out, I thought Timber did well and also got the assist, then there was Raya with some of his fine saves. But everyone else in the team were a bit ‘meh’ if I’m honest. Saliba and Gabriel were a little too open at times for some of United’s chances in the second half, Calafiori defensively was looking a little shaky and was hooked in the second half, Trossard was Drossard, as I’ve already mentioned, Nwaneri was quiet but I also thought he had a poor game (it happens) and Merino didn’t really amount to much as a centre forward. He also gave the ball away poorly on the edge of our box for one of their big chances, so I don’t think we can say he had his finest football match.

But it’s all a bit ‘so what?’ at this stage, right? Our domestic season pretty much had the life sucked out of it a few weeks back and now I just want it to be over. We have hopes for the Champions League but that’s going to be super tough given the route we would have to the final and we all know our terrible record in European football anyway. So right now it’s all feeling a little muted. The hope was sapped when we lost our quartet of attacking players over a month ago and at least we got a promising cameo from Martinelli, but we’re going to keep coming up against these low blocks and we’re going to keep struggling until a longer term resolution can be found. And that can probably only really start in the summer.

Back tomorrow.