It’s really hard to go in to too much detail on yesterday’s game for me personally because, frankly, it played out just as I expected it to. At the end of the match I said on social media “that’s two hours of my life I’ll never get back” and so it would come to pass that I speculated whether it would be a tough game to watch.

It was.

Everton are a physical side, they play long balls, it’s not particularly interesting and there’s no problem with that whatsoever. That’s what they do. Up against them yesterday were an Arsenal team that to me just looked like they wanted to get in and out without any injuries or players being hobbled ahead of the Real Madrid game on Tuesday. Within the first few minutes Patterson – their right back – can gone in hard on Nwaneri and quite how he didn’t pick up a yellow card was a bit bizarre, but Darren England and his VAR would do a few things over the course of the game that you’d label as that. Like giving the penalty and not having another look at it afterwards. In real time I think we all get it; you think you’ve seen something, you give a decision, but you know you’ve got another pair of eyes looking at it. I have absolutely no idea what the VAR Stuart Attwell was doing when he decided to clear the decision to go to a penalty, but it wasn’t his job, because if he was he’d have at least told him to take another look. The first contact was out of the box, this carried on inside the box but by the time it’d got inside the box, Harrison was falling to the floor and MLS hadn’t touched him. Harrison even got up because he knew it wasn’t a foul and he knew it wasn’t a penalty. The only two people on the planet who appeared to think differently were refereeing this game and on VAR.

And as I saw that, I found myself just shrugging, thinking “what’s the point this season?” – that is absolutely how I feel right now. This season has gone to the dogs, we’ve drawn too many games, but we’ve been shafted in so many now that it isn’t worth arguing over. Just end this season now please and maybe somebody at Arsenal can go to PGMOL HQ and ask them if we can do a reset for next season. Declan Rice was sent off at home to Brighton for delaying a restart by touching the ball, but O’Brien was allowed to do just that by stopping Raya from kicking it out in the second half. He was already on a yellow, the referee saw it, decided to ignore it. On full time he blew the whistle, but then decided he wanted Everton to have another attack. Crazy stuff. But that’s been happening all season. The Saliba penalty concession at Brighton, the Saliba sending off at Bournemouth which was followed up with the exact same foul the next day in the Liverpool/Chelsea game. The list goes on and yesterday was just another one to chuck on to the pile.

Arsenal could have responded against that setback though and there was definitely enough time, but this season we all know the script, so this would play out as a pretty turgid match in which at times it felt like our players were playing within themselves a bit. We still forced Pickford into a few very smart saves, we still should have gone on to win the game, but by the final whistle I had myself simply shrugging my shoulders and getting on with my day. I don’t have the energy for this domestic season to be that fussed about more dropped points in what is leading to a procession towards the title for Liverpool. For us we remain out on a bit of an island in second and with Forest losing to Villa yesterday, we’re five points clear of them and ten clear of Chelsea in fourth. If Brentford beat Chelsea today then we’ll be in a position whereby winning our four remaining home games basically confirms us in second. That gives you a better prize money pot in the league, it ensures that we’ll have a better seeding in the Champions League (I think) for next season, but that’s about it. We just need to do enough to get over the line in the league this season and that’s why I think most of us are a bit ‘meh’ to all of this.

We’ve drawn 11 games this season. That’s not good enough to fight for a title and that is something that needs to change next season if we want to be truly competing until the end. This season when faced against these low block teams that want to sit in, we just haven’t got that all-important first goal and it’s why we find ourselves where we are, coupled with shoddy refereeing like yesterday and an injury list that makes you wince.

I should probably talk about Trossard’s fine finish, but really I can’t be arsed. What’s the point when a match winner like that counts for nothing when you’re handicapped by officiating?

If we’re looking for positives, Arteta dropped some mass rotation, which means there will be a freshness about the team on Tuesday and we’ll have Timber, Partey, hopefully Saka, Martinelli all able to fire on a few more cylinders by only playing a bit part in the game. And it’s a game in which the season is resting on now. Somehow, by some miracle, we have to keep Real Madrid quiet, whilst also doing something up the other end that gets us the goals needed to progress to the semi final. Fingers crossed.

Right, I’ll catch you all tomorrow as we build up to that big Champions League night on Tuesday, which feels like it’s getting bigger with every passing moment.