The team that opened up Sunderland at will was close to the same team that hardly had a shot on goal against Sunderland, Stoke City, Norwich and Shalke. Our offensive game has greatly improved since then and it is in performance and not personnel. The players have needed to gel together, to click into the Arsenal way of playing and this for me has been our strength since Arsene Wenger took hold of the Arsenal reigns. It is why so many players have been able to flourish at this club. Yet I believe our strength can also prove to be our biggest weakness. Our style of play needs all the boxes ticked for us to win matches, even against teams far poorer than us.

I wanted to write a review after the match, I had so much to say but currently I do not really want to revisit again, mainly because it isn’t something I want to have to think about a great deal once more, but also I am sure there are not many people who fancy hearing the same gnashing of teeth.

Many people have given the opinion that the team just didn’t want it very much and did not put in the required effort to win the game. Personally I think that is used a little to easily when a bad result turns up on our doorstep. If Kazim Richards shot deflected off the post and away to safety and Rosicky’s strike found the net rather than the woodwork then there would be absolutely no talk of not having the desire to win the game.

Rather than talk about the game I would like to give my theory on why we lost a game against a side that we should be winning, especially at home. How can a side boasting internationals all over the pitch not be able to beat a Championship team in an important match. It hasn’t really been debated very much in the last few days, debate has largely been replaced with furious anger in the words of Samuel L Jackson.

I just want to explain that I am not making excuses for the manager, burying my head in the sand, accepting failure, ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results’ or whatever sayings that have been lazily passed around from person to person on the internet. Sorry, pet hate.

I have been scratching my head as to what causes us to open up teams for fun one week in the league and then look the complete opposite in the cup a few days later.

Only the previous Saturday we watched Arsenal put on a scintillating display in the first half carving out chance after chance, admittedly not being able to take any of the endless chances we made for ourselves, well until Santi’s low drilled effort. Then in the second half with our backs to the wall, we defended for our lives and ground out a deserved three points.

The team that opened up Sunderland at will was close to the same team that hardly had a shot on goal against Sunderland at home, Stoke City, Norwich and Shalke. Our offensive game has greatly improved since then and it is in performance and not personnel. The players have needed to gel together, to click into the Arsenal way of playing. Our style of play has been our strength since Arsene Wenger took hold of the Arsenal reigns. It is why so many players have been able to flourish at this club. Yet I believe our strength can also prove to be our biggest weakness. Our style of play needs all the boxes ticked for us to win matches, even against teams far poorer than us.

Think back to seasons past. Huddersfield, Leeds United, Leyton Orient and I am sure others that have slipped my mind, we made hard work of all of those teams yet the only reason why ‘the players do not care’ line did not come out was because we sneaked through, usually in a replay. The one thing that these cup games have in common is the line ups put out. Squad players who haven’t had much in the way of football, younger talents who have yet to be given a run to develop their game. When we make too many changes to our team we forget how to attack and score goals. It is why for me, when we play badly we often lose where as other teams can go months playing poorly yet win games. Man U being a good example.

It is not just changes but also the international break. Countless times our players have come back from a two week interlull only to produce a poor performance. How many times have we come back from a break and then proceeded to blow the opposition away? Not many I’d guess.

The team fielded against Blackburn Rovers consisted of

Szczesny

Coquelin Koscielny Vermaelen Monreal

Arteta Diaby

Rosicky

Chamberlain Giroud Gervinho

You cannot tell me that a team like that should not be thumping Blackburn Rovers at home and I am sure we would have, if that very team had played together previously. I am sure we would have created chances, passed quicker and opened them up a lot more had they played more often.

Here is a table of the last 10 fixtures and the minutes played by some of our attacking players. I have added Franny Coquelin who played at right back for the first time this season for good measure.

It is criminal that Tomas Rosicky has played only 68 minutes out of a possible 950 minutes. Not sure what the guy has done wrong and now that our domestic cup competitions are done with, I worry that we will not be seeing much of him in an Arsenal shirt again. Hyperbole? Perhaps but I am swaying away from my point. We lost to Blackburn due to a lack of continuity of player.

Compare those yesterday without regular minutes to our starters. Cazorla, Wilshere and Walcott have more than double than the five players in the last ten games.

Like I said earlier, this is not an excuse, just an explanation of why 11 superior players did not perform based on history under Arsene Wenger. I would love to know Arsene’s reasons for his limited amount of rotation with certain players. Would it be beneficial to the squad if Tomas Rosicky started at home to West Ham with Cazorla on the bench with the strongest team around him, wouldn’t that spread the load over the whole squad rather than relying on 15 players and then having a collection of Rosicky’s who have a handful of games under their belts. Perhaps the fact that the team have needed to bed in has meant that Arsene hasn’t wanted to chop and change too much. I don’t know.

Whatever the reason, we really should be in the FA Cup and we need to find ways of managing the full depth of our squad a little better so when it comes to these types of games we do not have a collection of strangers on the pitch.

At least 50% of that team will not be playing against Bayern Munich on Tuesday so I wouldn’t go around batching teams together as one. It is time to dust ourselves off from the weekend disappointment and think ahead to a really big game tomorrow.

It would be typical Arsenal to go and beat them, let us do that.