Arsenal 3 – 2 Villa; A decent performance, but not good enough

While I’m disappointed that we lost, I really don’t think that was too bad a performance.
Indeed, for probably 60 minutes, I thought we were the better side overall.

I asked for the side to get Wesley into the game more and although I’m not sure we achieved that, he did score one and McGinn and Grealish were excellent. There’s no way you can fault their effort and McGinn particularly, ran himself into the ground, which with his engine takes some doing.

Simply put, we were defending resolutely and actually dominated Arsenal’s midfield, but when you’re working that hard, you can’t keep it up and Arsenal came back into it more and more as the lads tired.

We did really well to get the second goal so quickly after they’d scored their penalty, but as the game wore on, we were sitting deeper and deeper and inviting them on.
That, plus their obvious technical skill made them look very threatening and you could see the equaliser and the winner coming.

But that performance leaves me highly encouraged.
Yes, it’s disappointing that we’ve lost again against 10 men, but to go 2-1 up at the Emirates in the first place is no mean feat in itself.
Let’s keep it real and remember that this was Arsenal away.
A game the law of averages says we’ll lose.

Did we create enough chances to have won the game?
My poor memory says I’m not sure, as Arsenal had a good few and probably more than us, to be honest.

What I do know is, is that in my opinion today’s performance would have given us a win against quite a few Premier league sides.

So while I’m disappointed, I’m not annoyed in the slightest.
We’ll be ok this season, no worries.