Match report – Player ratings – By the numbers – Highlights

Something something blah blah measure of champions winning ugly blah-de-blah-de-blah.

And yeah, there are games when you have to grind it out. When you have to hope that someone does something special to break the deadlock or you get a bit of a luck. Yesterday it was much more the latter than the former. When we had a corner with just seconds of the game to go and we took it short, I was about ready to explode.

Generally speaking, short corners do my head in, unless you’re trying to waste time. On this occasion though, Ozil fed Alexis who turned and whipped in a cross. That most effective of target men, Theo Walcott, headed it towards the back post where Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Laurent Koscielny were. At first it looked like an Ox shot had gone in off Koscielny’s arms, but replays show it was the Frenchman whose poor connection with the ball sent it spinning into his own hands and into the net.

Cruel on Burnley? Perhaps. But this is not a Burnley support group. They defended extremely well all game, and I don’t buy into the anti-football complaints that were made afterwards. When you see Arsenal blitz Chelsea and destroy Basel, the last thing you’re going to do is play in a way which makes it easy for them to repeat that. It made perfect sense to play the way they did, and to be fair it almost worked for them.

As much as their tactics and defensive commitment played a part, so too did a certain jadedness on our part. It was more or less the same starting XI for the third time in 8 days, and I think that was a factor in our performance. It’s difficult enough to break teams down when they play like that, but when you’re just that little bit tired and key individuals struggle to impose themselves, then it’s even more of a challenge.

“We made a lot of technical mistakes,” said Arsene Wenger after the game, and there were misplaced passes, poor touches, shoddy control and wrong decisions galore, particularly in the first half. Indeed Burnley had the best chance of the first period, Sam Vokes beating the offside trap but heading wide when he really should have scored. We got away with that one.

They had another couple in the second half too. Petr Cech had to make a very good save to stop a goal-bound header going in at the far post, before Michael Keane crashed a header off the bar from a corner. We weren’t quite living on the edge, as we had pretty much all the possession, but these are the fine margins of games like this.

As it went on we pushed them deeper and deeper and the game was primarily played in their half. And yet we failed to create too much. Alexis fired a volley just wide, Walcott curled an effort just outside the post, and it looked as if they’d hang on for a point. Then we took a short corner in injury time and before I could go mad at that the ball was in the back of the net. Not quite a never in doubt, but a very, very welcome goal all the same.

Afterwards, the manager said:

Overall, we lacked a little bit sharpness and our legs were a bit heavy today. That was a game we could have won 1-0 and lost 1-0 as well on set pieces. We made many technical mistakes today in the first half, we really wanted to win today, we knew it could be a big week for us. Maybe we played a little with the handbrake, not enough freedom, not enough combinations, not enough pace to go in behind. Is it down to us being below our level or because they defended well? Certainly a bit of both

And on the goal:

I haven’t seen the replay and honestly from the bench I didn’t even see the ball going in. Maybe we were lucky there, yes.

Gotta love it – 20 years of Wenger and he rolls out a ‘lack a little bit sharpness’, a ‘handbrake’ and an ‘I didn’t see it’ in one interview. A more cynical man than I might suggest there was a behind the scenes wager going on there, seeing how many classics he could fit in. You wouldn’t put it past him, would you?

Overall, I think yesterday showed why, even if we’ve found a system that works pretty well, rotation and options will still be hugely important for us this season. Physically you could see some players were really struggling, especially in the second half, and the passing was missing that zip we saw in the last couple of games. Keeping legs fresh and maintaining the level of performance is a challenge the manager is going to have to face sooner rather than later. There are good players on the bench, we have to use them a bit.

The other issue we had yesterday was that when we were finding it hard to break them down, the inability to change our attacking game was a bit of a handicap. There was no Lucas, absent with a reported ‘minor’ knee injury although there was a suggestion he was simply left out of the squad, while Olivier Giroud would have been a very handy substitute to call on in a game like yesterday’s where some physical presence might test the defence.

Still, we got through it, got the points, and when it comes right down to it you have to give the team the credit for keeping going right until the final whistle. Over the course of the season there are days you’ll play well and win, and others when you just need that little bit of good fortune. Ideally there’ll be far more of the former, but when it happens the way it did yesterday, I’m not going to complain.

After the other big result yesterday, in which Sp*rs beat Man City, a win was absolutely vital. The gap between 1st and 3rd is now just two points, and going into the Interlull with the disappointment of dropped points would have been a shame after the week we’ve had. We have a very winnable run of fixtures when the football starts again in a couple of weeks, so taking all three points yesterday sets us up nicely for that.

Right, there you go. We should have an Arsecast Extra for you later on, but James is on holiday and may have to find a public space because the wifi is a bit dodgy. We’ll do our best for you though. All going well, that’s a lunchtime podcast, more or less.

Until then.