Some teams and fans will get frustrated at incredibly marginal var reviews for hairline offsides....but even more frustrating is to not even have a var review at all.
Anywhere else on the pitch it is a clear high boot and free kick, walker’s boot is inches from Gabriel’s head. How can than not be a pen!?

Also annoying to not see yellow cards for the sneaky fouls high up the pitch to stop counters. Mahrez got away with a clear arm tug on Pépé, worse than the one Rodri was booked for

Fortunately it is still 1-0. We can still get points from the game.

Is Arteta brave enough to bring Partey in, for Xhaka? Xhaka lacks the mobility needed to be at City's players' feet when they have the ball.

The VAR decisions in the various games today have been bizarre. No excuse to get things so wrong when you have the benefit of multiple replays from various angles.

What was bizarre was to not even have a VAR review.

Not impressed with Willian so far at all since he arrived.

I’m beginning to really like this team

Is he playing?

Keen to see Partey at some point this evening, especially since I’ve now learned how to pronounce his name.

Despite everything so far we deserve something out of this

Could have been an ‘orange’ card for Cancelo. So they erred on the side of yellow. Hey ho.

Not any more today then.

So far he’s not doing much in the side Reiss Nelson isn’t capable of

Can we take Luiz off free kicks maybe?

Ah. A free kick. Same place. Not Luiz this time please.

Here comes the man. And Nketiah too.

Parteeeyyyyyy time

He’s celebrating with a booking.

Awful ref. Clear corner not given. City take 45 seconds to get the ball back in play and ref blows up bang on the 4 mins added time.

Overall a disappointing and underwhelming performance.

Why did you post that. I was expecting an equaliser.

*%^@ *%^@ *%^@

We were poor today. Very pedestrian.

Disappointing in the end, very little goal threat second half.

Playing out from the back is great when you break the press but you have to then do something with it.

We need some creativity and imagination in the final third and to find a way to play Aubameyang centrally.

Leno very good apart from his passing which is still a little too slow for my liking, Gabriel and Saka both very good, Tierney good, everyone else pretty average really.

It was clear from city that after their 5-2 runaround and an unconvincing start to the season they were just going to try to be very solid today. They clearly wanted the 1-0 to restore some confidence. We were better in the first half than second.
2 hardest games of the season out of the way, sadly both with our regulatory defeats

Positives

We didn’t get thrashed and the signs of Arteta making us competitive again we’re evident by city wasting time.

Saka again looking the part

Negatives

We could have played all night and wouldn’t have scored

Willian absent

Ceballos, whilst he’s workmanlike and keeps himself busy as the 2nd midfielder he should offer a more creative outlet beyond the halfway line. I like him but can’t help think this is why the club haven’t pulled the trigger on a permanent transfer.

This.

This too.

I thought the subs were too late to impact the game as well.

Saka our best player, needs to stay in the team but we also need to be careful resting him at the right time due to his age.
Arteta has certainly fixed the drastic leaking of goals, has us set up better, now to address the goals and creativity.
I can’t help but think Arteta has a ‘way’ of scoring but perhaps we need to take the handbrake off and just let the attacking players push forward more and take more shots at goal!

I only watched the 2nd half and we were...errr...2nd best. We no longer look like we are going to get thrashed and we managed to stay in the game which always gives us a chance but you can see we are not that far along in the Arteta rebuild. Such a shame we couldnt get hold of Aouar (no idea how to spell it) because we look so devoid of creativity through the middle.

Nice to at least see a set of match stats that showed a pretty even contest. Ederson made two top class saves to deny Saka and Aubameyang. Hopefully the days of us conceding 25+ shots on our goal with us being able to count our attempts on 1 hand are behind us.

With the squad we have it feels that most of our games this season are going to be tight affairs. We aren’t going to hammer many teams by 3 clear goals, but equally we aren’t getting steamrollered. I think will even be the case in the easy on paper home games, as already proven by West Ham and sheff Utd. Those sorts of tight games are where Arteta is going to need to get us to take a few more risks, push up a bit higher and start getting the ball forward more quickly and getting bodies in and around the box because we won’t be able to rely on the counter attack all the time.

Not sure that Leicester, Man U, Villa are an easy run.

Then Leeds, Tottenham.

Van Diijk Ccruciate could be out for 8 months.

If they lose Mané they're finished.

It's all that faffing about in our half that has done for us. Luiz today had 2/3 players north of him and he passes it back ffs get it forward.

To be fair I thought Luiz had a decent game. He always looks a mega good professional and apparently is greatly respected by other players. I must admit, I think overall he’s been a good signing.

But I’m not convinced by playing out from the back. I know there have been examples when it’s lead to a great goal. But a lot more often than not it seems to result in Leno passing it to various defenders, one of whom (hopefully Luiz as he’s the best passer in defence) ends up punting the ball towards a distant team mate up the pitch. Leno could have done that without all the messing about.

I’m not blaming Leno by the way. It happened with Martinez as well.

Agree about Luiz, despite his obvious faults he’s been a decent signing and he shouldn’t be considered the creative engine of the team.

On the passing out from the back thing, is part of the problem that us as fans aren’t used to it?

For example are we only considering and complaining about the instances when it hasn’t worked out and we have conceded possession when if Leno was booting it long 50% of the time we might have lost it anyway ?

We had someone on here earlier complaining that Lenos kicking can be slow, we’ll it has no consequences to the game and doesn’t affect anything. Can you see what I mean, I can’t recall an instance where we screwed it up under Arteta and conceded.

Didn’t say it was easy coming up, just that we’ve had the 2 hardest games done inside 5 games.

I read that of all Arteta’s games in charge for Arsenal he’s played Liverpool or Man City in 20% of them!

On the passing it out from the back, I have no issue with the tactic in general, my concern is that it is deliberately slow to invite the pressure. My concern is how often has it lead to a chance, or a goal?
I think we should look to keep possession rather than hoof it long but I’d like to see us mix it up and keep it higher up the pitch. Push up at goal kicks and you can still play it short, but by passing it around our own box we’re always 80 yards from goal even if we do beat the initial press.
It is kind of the opposite of the high press which looks to win the ball high up and so you’re already in a dangerous position to score. Our ‘dangerous position’ is still 80 yards from goal but we might have a numerical advantage or created that overload....but still with 80 yards to go

I've nearly fallen asleep twice in the first half so if the 2nd half is worse then probably time to do something else.

Willian as the central striker was a mistake. Too short to head the ball and not able to hold it up either.

Overall a pretty dull affair but hard to score when unable to get the ball. But at least there was some good structure and defence so didn't get torn apart like the past. Now that the defence is a lot more solid I think Arteta can work on faster transitions and attack.

Yeah was looking at the fixture list last week and we're in a very tough schedule of matches. Not sure where the points will come from.