You can take something different away from Friday night’s clash with Ipswich on every viewing.
It was at times dominant, at times wasteful and other times simply ok. It was a bit of a mystery of a watch.
That’s not to say we were bad, or that we didn’t deserve the three points because it would be tough to say we didn’t, but more that there was simply something missing.
Ipswich were a game opponent determined to at least attempt to play their football and keep pressing forward where they could. For all that, they didn’t really cause us any problems (they had one shot all game) and yet we left the door wide open for a sucker punch or a moment of refereeing stupidity.
We could and should have put this team to bed a lot earlier and by a wider margin than we eventually did. That we didn’t or couldn’t was frustrating. Again, that’s not to say we were bad but rather that we simply didn’t make the most of our dominance.
As it has on more than one occasion of late, our eye for goal deserted us in big moments.
While it may seem churlish to moan about a victory or the manner of it, I can’t help but wonder if our performance was just another example of the sort of stodgy, constipated stuff we have been seeing for weeks now.
Once you add into the mix the absence of Bukayo Saka, you have yourself a side really lacking the ability to pull away from opponents at opportune moments.
It would be wrong to pin it all on Saka’s absence because we had struggled with him in the team but his output was phenomenal and often made the difference for us in games where we didn’t click. Thankfully, against Ipswich we did enough to get over the line but against tougher opponents, I think we’ll struggle to find a way through.
The onus is really on Mikel Arteta therefore to get some business done in January that changes that dynamic. There is a lot of football to play over the next month and a lot of goals needed to win them. As it stands, this team probably won’t have enough to keep pace with the league leaders if we can’t add some firepower.
For all that, it was still good to get the win on Friday and satisfying to see contributions from Leandro Trossard and Kai Havertz. We’re going to need them at their most productive in the period ahead and it was a fine cross and better finish to get that new partnership up and running.
The manager spoke in his pre-match press conference about being less predictable in our attacking play with Saka out for an extended period. We need different combinations, new ways of moving the ball and our opponents around, better options when we come up against obdurate opponents. In short, we need to find ways to win.
In that sense, yesterday was a start but there will be harder days to come. We can only hope the manager has plans in mind for each and every one of them.
It was satisfying at least that we took advantage of slip-ups elsewhere to move back up into second in the Premier League and we picked up a clean sheet too. On reflection, we can’t be unhappy with that.
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