This was far from being a perfect performance from Arsenal away to Everton. Ramsey and Chamberlain forgot their shooting boots, Mertesacker looked well off the pace, Ozil should have had his sunglasses on and the Gunners just could not quite click.
Dead and buried with 10 minutes to go though, Arsenal showed some real character and ground out the point we deserved. In fact if you consider that their second goal should not have stood, we were unlucky. These things happen though and we are probably more happy with the result than Everton.
But I think the players can take a lot of positives from the game. We stopped a big rival getting one over on us, while answering the question of whether we can put last season’s away day blues behind us. Don’t forget that the Gunners are not up to speed yet, in fact there is a lot more to come, but we were much more solid, in general, and a lot less naive after going behind.
The Alexis experiment did not work today, but he will get more chances and do better. At least Giroud stepped up and should now be a weapon for us again. Campbell impressed in his short spell and Jack Wilshere continued to show that he is getting back to what he was.
Now just go and beat Besiktas on Wednesday and we can really start to look forward to the rest of the season.