Mikel Arteta has less than a week to find a solution to the ultimate problem with his Arsenal side or face further Premier League crisis moments
Where to begin… Just overall a horrid afternoon for Arsenal where the worst fears of the club’s current situation were realised and then paraded in front of our eyes for ninety-plus minutes.
Before the match, I did not want to see Mikel Merino thrown into the scenario we saw today. There were certainly periods after the heroics at Leicester where I nearly very much convinced myself it was the right decision – particularly with how poor Raheem Sterling had been.
I asked Arteta before the match whether the euphoria of the goals at Leicester weighed on his mind before selecting him to start. Based on his answer, I was almost convinced the Spaniard therefore wouldn’t come in.
We believe he was right for that context, but then he made it right. Starting a game is very different, especially against a team that obviously have the adaptability to play in different ways, with very different behaviours within different structures that they can use as well and that's what we have prepared.”
So therefore to see him in the starting eleven was definitely a surprise which raised eyebrows but left worry in my thoughts. I believed he might operate as a target man figure and in the opening moments of the game, he did.
Heading the ball down from crosses and holding up play. But as the game drifted on, so did Merino.
He would drift into wide areas, back into midfield positions leaving Arsenal without a focal point and it showed. His heroics from the week before came from being in the box, but the ball simply was not sent into him enough in those areas, so what was the point?
Arteta spoke after the game of his anger, taking responsibility and wanting his side to suffer the emotions of the defeat in the next day or two. What hits hardest for me about this game is how predictable it was, even after the win the previous weekend.
The Leicester victory was not a win earned through smooth, dominant attacking football. Arsenal struggled for eighty minutes and then brought on a last resort option who delivered.
When you then start the last resort option, something has gone wrong. That is no slight on Merino, nor does it ignore the context that the Gunners are going through the worst injury crisis of their forward line in my living memory.
What is so predictable about it is the fact that there was a chance to respond, to react and the club instead decided not to. I asked Mikel Arteta after the match whether the struggles to score against West Ham vindicated how vocal he was during the January window as to his desire for a striker to be signed, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, he downplayed this strongly.