I am not trying to put all the blame for the Arsenal result on our club captain Mikel Arteta, by any means, even though he did give away the free kick that led to the equaliser and scored the own goal that denied us any points at all.
I feel for the Spanish midfielder I really do and he was dead right to complain to the referee about the free kick for their first goal because he clearly won the ball. But apart from his bad luck, which extended into him picking up yet another knock after having come on to replace Coquelin, he does look off the pace.
If it had been Cazorla that needed to come off then I could understand Arsene Wenger turning to the passing and technical ability of Arteta but it was the tackling and running off the ball of Coquelin that we needed to replace and Flamini was much better at that when he came on.
In fact the Frenchman even tries to get forward and make Aaron Ramsey like runs so I do not understand the manager´s decision there. We will have to wait and see how long both Coquelin and Arteta will be out of action for, but can you see Arteta being preferred to Flamini again in the near future?