Here's Alan Alger's must-read Three Things We Learned after Arsenal endured a disappointing evening in the East End of London.

Fan’s search for explanations contradicts the high standards Arteta has set…

“It’s the least important of the four trophies we’re competing for”, “I’d rather we had a complete stinker in this competition to get that out of the way”, “Getting through this game without injuries was the key objective”…

The range of excuses and explanations go on and on and proliferated Arsenal social media accounts last night. To be fair to Mikel Arteta he didn’t pull any punches in his post match interviews and suggested he was as annoyed as the 5000 plus Gooners that had made their way to east London.

A really interesting line within his summing up suggested that he’d been warning the players that they were in for a real battle at the London Stadium. “For 48 hours I’ve been preparing them” said our Spanish boss.

You can look at that two ways.

Either the players chose not to respond to that warning; or they weren’t capable of living up to it. Arteta rightly received praise at the weekend for claiming three easy points in the league without any extensive pressure on the squad.

He also said he was angry with himself yesterday - which is a good marker of the responsibility he is willing to take, and makes those excuses some fans were willing to give the team irrelevant.

Forget November wobbles, it’s the 10 games in the final 37 days of the year that worries me…

November has historically been a bad month for the club, with results often turning sour just after the Halloween pumpkins. I’m not putting Wednesday night’s result into that trick or treat basket, but we have to be wary that a very difficult game at Newcastle awaits on Saturday.

Most fans don’t like the intrusion of an international break during the first few months of the season, but the rest our players will have between the 11th and 25th in a couple of weeks comes at a great time. From the 25th onwards we play an astonishing 10 times in 37 days.

That’s a brutal schedule and one that worries me massively now the second string and replacement players have shown how low their floor is in a League Cup tie. That period should be one where we are relying on them to take over the burden on the first choice set of players. Allowing intelligent rotation and rests to be had.

Mikel Arteta will now be asking if he can trust them over such a marathon run of games

Reputation rescue job needed in next 10 days…

The fast-moving nature of the game, and fan reaction could ensure that all is forgiven by around 7.30pm on Saturday evening. Newcastle have to be considered at least top four rivals, even if we can’t quite consider them for the title (yet). A real statement needs to be made at the weekend.

We’re only slight favourites to win the game, and some might disagree with that. I want to see a fired up team ready to make a statement win in a difficult match.

They can then move onto a game against Seville at home next midweek where qualification to the knock-out stage of the Champions League can be achieved with two games to go.

A week is a long time in football and we have to hope that by next Wednesday evening we’re considering the abomination of last night as a blip