A Few Thoughts From Selhurst Park

I don’t want to think about what I just saw at Selhurst Park, I just want to move on and forget it.

With that being said, here are my thoughts on the game… or the 70 minutes that I watched because that was unbearable.

Nuno Tavares should not see the light of the pitch again. On the first goal he ducked, allowing the ball to be centered to Mateta. On the second goal, he gave up and just decided to stop chasing Ayew, leaving with him time and space to pick a spot to finish. He was poor in possession and had an awful game all round.

Gabriel shaved his hair and apparently shaved some of his football ability off too. Ben White’s foul on Zaha which would ultimately lead to a goal was just lazy defending and was asking to be punished.

The midfield unit was awful. Partey had a shocker – he could barely complete a pass. Odegaard missed a massive chance in the second half to give us a chance at coming back and Xhaka, although the best of the CMs out there, helplessly watched as Palace ran rampant in the middle of the pitch.

Lacazette, Smith-Rowe and Saka could barely create anything in that game. A lot of that can be put down to the lack of quantity and quality of service from the midfield. Arsenal only really looked like scoring once Arteta changed the formation to a 3-2-1-4, despite having no success.

Tierney is out with a knee injury, Partey just got injured leading up to the penalty, Pepe is out with sickness.

A lot of the things that could’ve gone wrong in that game went wrong.

It doesn’t mean that the alarm bells should be ringing regarding Top 4, but that is most certainly a massive loss. This result makes our next fixture against Brighton that much more important, as we currently sit 5th, equal on points with Spurs.

Not to mention Arsenal easily have the hardest run in – within the space of 2 weeks we play Chelsea, United and West Ham, with Tottenham not long after.

Conte and the rest of Spurs will be licking their lips looking at that result. Arsenal need to smarten up big time.