Arsenal Vs Newcastle United: 5 things we learned – Reaching the cliff

Arsenal continued their Premier League campaign against Newcastle United on Sunday afternoon. Here are five things we learned from the 2-1 loss.

Well, that was dreadful. Again. I shall touch on this later in the piece, but Arsenal have now played five Premier League games away from home this calendar year. They have lost all five of them. This was the latest of them, with Newcastle United coming from a goal down thanks to some fine finishing and questionable defending, and it leaves the Gunners with some major doubts to answer. I’m not sure that they can.

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Here are five things we learned from the disastrous 2-1 defeat.

5. Joe Willock’s turn to look young

Last week, Reiss Nelson was afforded his first Premier League start as Arsene Wenger looked to shuffle his pack, his eyes very much firmly on the Europa League. This week, it was the turn of Joe Willock, another talented 18-year-old who is a burgeoning young prospect. And, again, his youthfulness shone through, and not in a good way.

Willock’s first touch epitomised his game: He received the ball with his back to the Newcastle midfield. He looked to turn to his right, lost sight of the ball in doing so, suffering a heavy touch, was eased off the ball, and then resorted to a foul to prevent the Newcastle break. That was very much the way that it went for Willock.

While he was primarily neat and tidy in possession, showing a range of distribution and a sound and soft first touch, he lacked either the incision that is required in a more advanced role or the consistency to act as a metronomic, tempo-setting, deep-lying distributor. This is just one game. It would be a little naive and unreasonable to draw meaningful conclusions from this one performance. But for Willock, unfortunately, it was his youthfulness that shone through.