Match Report – Player ratings – By the numbers – Video

Arsenal have played 180+ minutes in the league against Chelsea this season. For 117 of those minutes (not including injury time), we’ve played with 10 men. In both games Diego Costa was involved in the red card incidents. At Stamford Bridge he cheated, yesterday he also cheated but ultimately Per Mertesacker can’t escape blameless for what was a poorly executed challenge.

What you have to understand is that with Costa is that the first thing he thinks of is the cheat. Not once since the incident have I heard anyone make the point that his first touch to push the ball past Mertesacker was an excellent one, and there’s no doubt in my mind that he could have stayed on his feet and tried to score, one on one with the keeper. I’m certain of that because Mertesacker didn’t touch him, watch the replays again and again and you’ll see there’s no contact.

Yet, knowing Costa as we do, and we really do, you can’t give him that opportunity. He made it look good, the challenge was clumsy and mistimed, and it’s a red card all day long. There isn’t a referee alive who wouldn’t have sent Mertesacker off yesterday.

Some will say he should have stayed on his feet and allowed the chance to unfold. In hindsight of course that would have been the best thing to do, but in the heat of a game players don’t really think like that. Defenders are there to make tackles, and you can be quite sure if he had done that and Costa had gone on to score, nobody would be saying ‘Well, it’s better to be a goal down with 11 men on the pitch and with lots of time to get an equaliser!’. It’d be ‘Why the hell didn’t he make a tackle?!’

In the cold light of day he’ll wish he hadn’t, but in the white hot, split-second atmosphere of a game like yesterday’s, he made a decision which turned out badly. His glance across the line to check where Koscielny was (I assume) didn’t help him either and it was like giving Costa a gift-wrapped opportunity to give his team an advantage, and he took it. Again, he could have taken that advantage in the form of a goalscoring opportunity, but he chose the other way, and you can judge that however you like.

I think it’s also worth looking at how easy it was for Chelsea to slice through our midfield to create that moment too. The pass from Willian was excellent, but did we do enough to prevent it? He ghosted past Ramsey high up the pitch, and Flamini’s backing off and backing off made it simple for him to pick the pass out.

The decision to take off Olivier Giroud was met with some dismay. Again it’s one in hindsight you could suggest was wrong in one way, because I think we’d have been better going forward with him still on the pitch. To have a genuine outlet would have been nice, and when we did get forward you could almost see players have lightbulb moments when they realised there was little point putting in a cross because Giroud wasn’t there.

Add to that how poor Theo Walcott was, and how Ozil and Campbell struggled to get into the game; as well as the chances we did create that he might have done better with, and it’s a shame he wasn’t on the pitch. However, he had picked up an injury in training during the week so the manager might have been worried he wouldn’t last, and ultimately the ten men did really quite well, especially in the second half when there could be no faulting the effort.

Their goal was irritating in that it came before we could properly re-organise in the wake of the red card. I think Monreal might have done more to close down Ivanovic a bit quicker, and the way Costa was allowed to ghost between Koscielny and Gabriel was not great from either of the centre-halves. It also meant that the change made at 0-0, bringing Giroud off, was one that he might not have made at 0-1.

Before the break we should have been level when Flamini squandered a golden opportunity to equalise. If you want to ask what he’s doing there in the first place, be my guest. I don’t really care. I do care that after a brilliant Ramsey pass and with just the keeper to beat from 7 yards, he flicked the ball over the bar, seemingly caught in two minds between a header and a shot. I keep talking about fine margins, that was a chance that had to go in.

In the second half we brought on Alexis, who definitely added something despite being rusty, and there were some moments where it looked like it might happen. A couple of scrambles in the box when Courtois spilled crosses, a Flamini back-flick from close range, and it almost opened up for Monreal in the last few minutes. At the other end Cech had to make a couple of saves but they were routine.

We weren’t taken apart, we weren’t under huge pressure, but the goal that would have got us something from the game was a step too far. Afterwards, Arsene Wenger said:

Overall we come out with a lot of regrets because we couldn’t play with our team and looking at Chelsea today there was a lot of room to beat them if we had 11 players. We are frustrated after the game because we could not play with our real assets.

And on the red card:

I think it was quick and harsh, but I have to watch it again. What can I change? It doesn’t change anything. The referee made the decision and we have to get on with it.

The red card I’ve covered, but in terms of that first quote, that’s the big frustration for me this morning. This is not a good Chelsea team, and it wasn’t even a Chelsea team that played that well on the day. They did enough, but for all the nonsense you hear time and again about how it can be more difficult to play against 10 men, the reality is that it makes it easier when you have a man advantage.

It’s all IFs to start thinking about how it might have gone 11 v 11, but I don’t think we’d have lost that game if the numbers had remained even. Ultimately though, we have to take responsibility for that. We allowed them to spring a trap, and we fell into it again. We also didn’t take the chance we had to make the game even, so losing those three points falls on us.

Obviously, it was a hugely disappointing result, but it’s important that it is compartmentalised and doesn’t become a demoralising one. We spoke this week about the experience of Petr Cech, and as the final whistle went he showed that, lifting Laurent Koscielny up from his knees as if to say ‘Don’t wallow in this’.

That’s the kind of attitude that has to be prevalent throughout the squad. We can roll our eyes at the inevitable ‘We have to pick ourselves up’ stories, but what else is there at this point? The defeat means we’re three points off the top, with Leicester still leading, and we remain level on points with Man City, so our position in the table is still pretty good.

However, while the table will tell you we’re still in the title race, we’re not playing like a team that’s going to win it. 2 points from the last 9 is a worry, and the fact that we’re struggling to play in any cohesive way only adds to that. I think we’ve done well to get away without a functioning midfield for so long, but it feels like it’s really catching up with us now, and the manager has got some serious thinking to do about that before our next game.

All in all a bad day. The wound inflicted is not fatal, but unless we can find something to spark this team back into life, a season that promised much in terms of the Premier League may end up feeling all too familiar.

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James and I will have the podcast for you later this morning. If you have any questions or topics for discussion, please send to @gunnerblog and @arseblog on Twitter with the hashtag #arsecastextra. That’ll be up before lunch.

Until then.