27/01/2026 - Arsenal 2-3 Man United “A First Home Slip: United Punish a Nervy Arsenal”

Well, that one hurt. It’s the first time in a long while that I woke up feeling bruised and genuinely had my day ruined thinking of the result. After having some time to process the first loss at the Emirates all season, I’ve come to terms with how and why we lost that game. Quite frankly we looked nervous and we were too cautious; there was no flow to our game aside from the first 20 minutes where we looked really good. The problem is with any game in the Premier League, when you give a goal away it’s always an uphill battle and unfortunately for us United scored two worldies on top of the gift we gave them. You have to give them credit, they were really organised and were clinical going forward. My only criticism of Arteta is that it tends to be a bit of a pattern that in bigger games he is too cautious and doesn’t demand enough attacking threat from the team. When we went 1-0 up, we had the chance to go for the jugular, but we sat back and instantly gave up any pressure we put on them. It was a rare but critical error from Zubimendi and we found ourselves on the back foot after that.

There weren’t many performances from an Arsenal point of view that I am going to mention for a positive reason, everyone had a poor game and we looked disjointed. It seemed as if Carrick had got his team to do exactly what he wanted, he's beaten Arteta both times he’s been in interim charge. If I’m honest, I don’t have much to say, I’ve tried to cast it from my mind I’m trying to be as positive as possible when I say that the fact it’s the first loss at home this season and the fact its United makes it feel so much worse. I don’t even want to utter the feelings of previous seasons but the fact we didn’t take advantage of the losses from Villa and City last weekend and they have managed to do what we couldn’t this week really worries me. We have Leeds then Sunderland next in the league and although on paper that should be two wins, going away to Elland Road won’t be easy at all. We have to bounce back straight away. First, we have Kairat tomorrow to hopefully complete our perfect Champions League group stage. On that note despite the disappointment of the weekend, we have to keep perspective, we are in a great spot in both the Premier League and Champions League and still in both cups already having won the first leg of the Carabao. If you had given me this situation at the start of the season I would have taken it a hundred times over. Let’s hope we can correct this slip as soon as possible and get back to winning ways. The next two games have to bring 6 points; we have to focus on what we can do and block out the media pressure and the potential pressure of teams behind. COYG!

The Northbank Blogger.

Player Ratings:

Raya 6/10

Timber 5/10

Saliba 6/10

Gabriel 6/10

Hincapie 5/10

Zubimendi 4/10

Rice 7/10

Odegaard 6/10

Saka 7/10

Jesus 5/10

Trossard 6/10