We did have one very good chance in the first half and those who call for us to stop messing around with the ball and just shoot will be pleased to see Santi Cazorla hit the ball straight down the keeper when he had Lukas Podolski in a far better position in front of him. Positions like that are personally the only reason why he should starting games for Arsenal and little else, so I was vocally frustrated at my favourite little Spaniard for thinking of glory rather than the good of the team. It was a day to forgot about for the pair of them in truth. Santi kept twisting and turning into red and white stripped shirts while Lukas Podolski jogged around playing short passes and little else.

Before what is likely to be our toughest run of fixtures to date, the last thing you wanted was defeat along with a limp attacking display at Stoke of all places. We have far more difficult games coming up on paper. For which all the mobile sports betting enthusiasts who are thinking of having a punt on those matches, SkyBet have a great welcome offer on at the minute, get a £30 matched free bet + £5 free casino chip with no deposit and a free fiver every week. Click this link for more information.

Strangely I feel somewhat numbed by it, probably because secretly I have conceded the league this season. Our fixture list is congested with difficult match after difficult match. Regardless of my expectations, I wanted us to beat Stoke City and we didn’t.

Personally I would have started Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, I explained the reasons why in my match preview but I fully understand the manager wanting to put out the same side that produced so much in the previous match. What disappointed me was our approach to the game. We gave Stoke too much respect. I don’t know if it was intentional or if the home side just forced us back but our quick aggressive starts in our last two games just disappeared and we reverted back to the sitting off, trying to control approach which didn’t go very well.

Looking at the bench, I am sure the idea was to control the game until the last twenty minutes and then bring on the firepower to win the game. Against the likes of Chelsea at the Bridge this makes sense but doing so against Stoke City when only a win will do is a little too cautious for my untrained eye.

Wilshere was not at his best but I fully back the decision to start him, he had been amongst our better players in the previous two matches and I am sure we would have heard cries that Flamini and Arteta is too negative if that decision was made.

But it was offensively where we fell short. When you end up with such a low amount of shots in a game you know you have had problems. Oliver Giroud was not at his best but when you isolate him as we have done in many away games, that can happen. We are a success when we get players running past him and around him. This did not happen and resulted in, well not very much in the way of penetration. As you know a lack of penetration can be hugely frustrating.

We did have one very good chance in the first half and those who call for us to stop messing around with the ball and just shoot will be pleased to see Santi Cazorla hit the ball straight down the keeper when he had Lukas Podolski in a far better position in front of him. Positions like that are personally the only reason why Podolski should starting games for Arsenal and little else, so I was vocally frustrated at my favourite little Spaniard for thinking of glory rather than the good of the team. It was a day to forget about for the pair of them in truth. Santi kept twisting and turning into red and white striped shirts while Lukas Podolski jogged around playing short passes and little else.

I have already made the point and I promise this is the last time during this piece. In the first half when we broke on rare occasions the Stoke defence were often pushed quite high up the pitch. I was looking to the right when the likes of Rosicky had the ball and there was nobody in the Oxlade-Chamberlain sized space on our right of the pitch. I thought he was our brightest attacking player when he came on and that was only for a short time.

The poor decisions from the referee as well as the actions of certain Stoke players did exist so being angry with these decisions does not mean that everything else was hunky-dory. But even given our poor performance on the day, the game is likely to end very different if Charlie Adam is sent off and Laurent Koscielny’s accidental handball is not given. Many teams, including Arsenal this season have won games when not playing well offensively. This could have been one of those games but hey-ho.

It is the offensive side of our game that we have not mastered this season I feel and the manager must see it as a work in progress still. We didn’t manage to get the forward the manager was targeting. Lukas Podolski is clearly not first on the team sheet and  we have badly missed the production of Theo Walcott. So I don’t think we can win the title until that area of the pitch is at the same level as the midfield and defence, whether that be natural improvements or reinforcements in the window.

How many times has our attack won us games we have not controlled? Not many off the top of my head. With a team performance lacking quality you need a match winner, we currently do not have an attacking match winner in our team. We need to control games to score goals and in the game against Stoke we did not have enough control of the game. In other words we are not strong enough in the final  third to win the Premier League or the Champions League, at least without Theo Walcott fit.

The title race is not over but it will be incredibly difficult now given our fixtures. We are going to need another response from the players. A win against Everton will flip the mood once more, so let’s go and do that. Please.