Which Arsenal will turn up today?

#AFCvEFC

So our frustrations continue...

Wenger often speaks of the importance of consistency, yet we've struggled to find much this season. Just when things were starting to look up, we lost to Spurs, and we've had to fight to win subsequent games against Leicester, Middlesbrough and Crystal Palace. Then, having won three games, we seemed to expect to be able to brush Monaco aside with ease, giving them less respect than we gave Palace in the previous game.

At least against Spurs it was an outstanding performance from them that beat us, and Harry Kane. He's looking like a World-beater at the moment, so it won't be too long before he joins the list of decent Spurs players and makes the move to Real Madrid. Which highlights the difference against Monaco; Berbatov is not that good a player, and wouldn't make it into our team, yet by giving them no respect, and not expecting to have to work hard for victory, we were unable to change this expectation and turn in a decent performance when we needed to.

I felt a bit sorry for Chamberlain as, while it was his mistake that has seemingly put the tie to bed, he did score a decent goal, and it was the lethargy and complacency that led to the first two goals that I found much more frustrating. Any player could make a mistake when the whole team is pushing forward to try to score a late equaliser, but there was no such pressure for the first goal; we just didn't close down the players on the ball. And for their second goal, Mertesacker's decision making gave us no chance. We're now in a position where we need to score early in the second leg to have any chance of progressing into the next round. An early goal might allow us to put Monaco under pressure, and if we could get a second before 75 minutes then it'd be very tense indeed for the last 15. This is incredibly wishful thinking, I know!

So, on to Everton, and we have a chance to bounce back. I'd like to see Gabriel given his chance in place of Mertesacker, following his abysmal performance. Aside from that, I'd quite like to see Özil continue to develop in his role behind Giroud. I think that Giroud has the kind of character to make him want to do everything he can to make up for his last performance, so I'd like to see him given the chance to put things right.

Predicted line-up (4-2-3-1): Opsina; Bellerin, Gabriel, Koscielny, Monreal; Coquelin, Cazorla; Walcott, Özil, Alexis; Giroud