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In midfield Arsène needs to find someone to replace Mikel Arteta at the base of our midfield. Mathieu Flamini and Calum Chambers are the most likely choices. If Per Mertesacker is not ready or if Koscielny is rested due to a persistent achilles problem then that choice gets removed. Mesut Özil could return to the team if ready and that could see the side switch back to a 4-2-3-1. Would Wilshere be the one to miss out? or would Arsène risk asking Ramsey and Wilshere to share that responsibility?

While Joel does not yet have the experience of the German I get the feeling that Campbell has more tools to work with and could offer the team more in terms of mobility, pace and creativity. But League cup games aside it's hard to see Campbell getting a chance when we have more established players in his position. Perhaps there is an area of his game that Arsène wants him to work on before he is unleashed, who knows.
Arsène also said that he was not against signing a defensive midfielder before the close of the window which is probably another way of saying he wants to buy one but in a manner that doesn't come across as

To start with we have Debuchy. He has a slightly different style to the player he replaced, in that when we have the ball his positioning is much higher up the pitch. This has led us to switch the majority of our play from the left to the right but has also had an affect on how we switch the play to that side. With Sagna when one of our midfielders had the ball, he was usually level with play, where as Debuchy is usually looking for a diagonal ball which saw a lot of passes going out of play on the right hand side as our player's instincts were to play it square. It seems like a small factor but we use our fullbacks for width and they are important in

On the days Giroud has a bad game, that performance is taken to be his “usual level” and the general opinion on whether or not he’s a good or bad player is taken usually using that game as the sample. Take Giroud vs Besiktas. To be fair, that’s probably his worst game for us. Is it coincidence that his worst games are the same games where our midfield is totally disconnected from him and he’s isolated? Giroud is still building his match fitness but the Giroud treatment allows for us to disregard the fitness and the fact that he was isolated and get at him. It’s happened with Arteta before. Remember the New York Redbulls friendly? Arteta had been injured in preseason training and played his first game in 3 months against NYRB. He’s 32, of course he was going to be off the pace seeing as he clearly wasn’t fit. Twitter used this as a reason to justify us “needing a beast

Cazorla, Giroud and Ramsey. Everyone else was good bar these three. Cazorla was found misplacing passes and losing possession while Giroud missed chance he should have been scoring any day of the week. Ramsey, however, pissed me off the most tonight. He’s a great player, one of our best but tonight we didn’t see his normal self…he was someone who was over-complicating and trying to much, especially with the dribbling and constant show-off moves but I am confident we’ll see the normal self of his once Ozil returns

Yup, just the two changes as we expected. Giroud comes in for Sanago while Monreal comes in for Gibbs. I did wonder if Oxlade-Chamberlain would start the game in place of either Cazorla or Wilshere but Arsene has gone with as close a team as to the one that started against Palace last weekend.

Özil is criminally underrated for a player who allows the Arsenal to tick. He may not be the direct route to goal but his scenic route tends to get us there quicker when the motorway is jammed.  And it is not only in our players in which he influences, his movement impinges on the shape of the opposition, gently swaying them from side to side with his pendulum like grace until a hole is found and punished by our onrushing midfielders or our forward options.

Kieran Gibbs is out for three weeks with a hamstring strain which is so very Arsenal. Let's hope Shad and his team are on hand to not turn it into an even more Arsenal two months. Nacho Monreal who did well when he came on last weekend will continue in Gibbo's place. Laurent Koscielny makes the trip which allows big Per Mertesacker his extended rest. New boy Calum Chambers will have another taste of what life is like at a big club with his first Champions League match of his career, even if it doesn't quite count unless you qualify but you know what I mean.

I cannot remember a time when an Arsenal first team had made so many bad passes in one 90 minutes. I couldn't believe what I was seeing at times in the second half as players usually so assured at keeping the ball were misplacing 5 yard pass after 5 yard pass. But before that, Arsenal had gone behind to yet another set piece. Hangeland was being marked by Alexis Sanchez of all people but he was shrugged away and then the new Palace signing ran into our near post zone. Sanogo could not reach the cross and Hangeland nipped in front of Koscielny to head past Szczesny