Three things we learned from Arsenal's deeply disappointing 2-0 defeat at the hands of Aston Villa at the Emirates on Sunday.

Here's Gooner Fanzine columnist Alan Alger with his latest piece, as he analyses the Gunners damaging loss to Unai Emery's Villa in North London at the weekend. 

Ahead of Mikel Arteta taking his side to Germany for the second leg of the Champions League quarter-final read on for what Alan has to say in his hard-hitting column. 

It didn’t have to be this way…

If only someone had warned us that Leandro Trossard isn’t as effective when he starts games. If only someone had warned us that Oleksandr Zinchenko is a liability who has a huge negative impact on our fluid play at both ends. If only someone had warned us that Gabriel Jesus slows down our attacks and isn’t a prolific Premier League striker.

I certainly don’t have the level of delusion to believe my tongue in cheek joke that Mikel Arteta really should read my column. Although all of the aforementioned themes have been covered with thorough reasoning across this season on these very pages. You’d think the heightened level of analysis at his disposal might have unveiled these flaws in a much more digestible way for the boss.

Trossard is an impact player that uses bursts of energy and instinctive finishing to make contributions to this team, but the vast majority of them have been from off the bench. When starting matches he seems to get found out very quickly by opposition defenders and then tends to turn in performances like yesterday.

Zinchenko is a far bigger problem. The level of imbalance in both our defensive and attacking play when he’s in the team must now be obvious to all – even his most ardent advocates. Listen, I’m a big fan of Spandau Ballet too, although I’m more a Through The Barricades kind of guy, we know you like singing his song.

Outside of the club Michael Cox (Zonal Marking on X) wrote an article after the Bayern game suggesting how important Zinchenko is and why we should accommodate him in the team. A hot-take based on Kiwior having a shocker? Possibly. As a big fan of his work I still find that take an absolutely baffling one, Kiwior based or not. I’m sure all Arsenal fans do. By this afternoon he was still banging the drum for Zinchenko on his occasional defence splitting passes, but there are so many things he still drags us down on which I’m surprised Cox hasn’t seen.

The best analysis will also tell us what we can’t see and what’s not happening…

I do feel a lot of analysis (including the Michael Cox piece) on the Ukrainian doesn’t go deep enough to show the other (mostly negative) effects of having him in the team. The basic numbers this season show a stark contrast between him being in the team and out of the team. His departure at half time in the Liverpool home game, all the way through to his next appearance in the starting line-up was clearly our best portion of the season. If you want to be even more basic with the stats then look at five of our nine defeats coming when he’s started games, including the horror show at West Ham in the League Cup

But what we’re not seeing as clearly is the fact that he is always chosen as the one to go forward from the back (invert), so it means that Ben White is left covering with the centre-backs. In turn White doesn’t get forward as much down his side – a superb outlet for us for at least two years.

Another knock-on effect of that is that Bukayo Saka then has to cover a lot deeper on the right – with White occupied elsewhere. Thinking back to yesterday Saka’s two best actions were reading the game in defence and dealing with two threats while clearing the ball efficiently. Screen shots have also shown how wildly erratic Zinchenko’s positioning had been throughout the game.

So we’re risking all that – including negating the output of two of our best players, Saka and White – to gain what? A couple of well placed and hugely risky over the top balls and through balls – which don’t suit our style of play anyway. I can’t believe we’re negotiating a new deal for him. We absolutely have to rethink that. The only games he’s worthy of being on the pitch for are home games against the bottom eight teams. While on the subject of his use – have a little look at how many times Pep Guardiola actually used him in the Premier League. A clue: there wasn’t one City season where he started even half of their Premier League games.

Guardiola knew exactly what he was doing when packaging the job lot of Jesus and Zinchenko off to us two summers ago. Some of our fans were acting like we’d extracted Walker and Aguero from the Etihad. The stark reality has maybe hit home now. They were squad players. Albeit good ones for a very, very good team.

Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water for Bayern…

Some fans have been more than happy to look at our missed chances in the first-half and the xG totals at the end of the game to declare we’ve been broadly unlucky and let’s just pick ourselves up and move on. Other Gooners have been slightly more aggrieved ranging from booing players to outright questioning of the manager.

I think both of the above are at the extremes of toxic negativity and ignorant positivity. We experienced the same after the West Ham defeat at home at Christmas. My article after that game tried to explain that 30 low quality shots has a huge variance factor which still can produce a defeat. Think of buying lots of single lines of lottery tickets for a mass draw. Your chance still exists but it’s a more remote one.

Outside of Trossard’s shot saved by the legs of Emi Martinez we didn’t offer up enough. Let’s not forget that Villa also had a shot which bounced off the bar and nearly over the line which would have been low on xG simply on the outcome alone. Again the numbers won’t tell you everything and careful interpretation combining numbers and football knowledge (without relying too much on one or the other) can be the only way to sum things up fairly.

If anything, yesterday’s line-up may have been far better suited to the match in Germany in midweek. Gabriel Jesus has played well in our matches in the competition so far this season. While we need to somehow shut off the attacking threat Bayern possess we don’t have that much to fear from their defence. If we respect the game and grow into the occasion I think we have the players to go through.

We certainly can’t afford another April collapse where everything goes wrong across a short number of days. Be ready to get behind the team and the manager if that happens – because the media and pundits would like nothing more!