Crystal Palace 3-0 Arsenal: Arteta makes huge Nuno Tavares decision

It will feel like the whole world is caving in on Arsenal. From the highs of a fourth straight away win at Aston Villa to the desperate lows of Monday night, this was a setback even the most cynical couldn’t have envisaged.

The performance was horrendous and the result damaging, although it’s arguably the injuries that are most concerning. Losing Thomas Partey late on to a recurring thigh problem could derail the season alone, so to have lost Kieran Tierney prior to that is a rotten cherry on an already stale cake.

Ahead of the 3-0 defeat it was revealed that the Scot would miss out with a knee problem, one that emerged in the aftermath of two entirely meaningful 90-minute friendly run outs for Scotland.

Scan will determine the full nature of the problem, one that is widely expected to rule him out for the rest of the season.

Crystal Palace 3-0 Arsenal: Mikel Arteta made a huge call to substitute Nuno Tavares and damage his confidence following Kieran Tierney’s injury

That naturally meant a return to the side for Nuno Tavares, who was starting his first game since his horror showing at Nottingham Forest where he was hooked before half-time. He went one better this time by actually making it into the changing rooms before being substituted.

To cut a long story short, he looks mostly unusable, such was the level of his performance.

Positionally he was at sixes and sevens, physically he was short,  for the first goal he isn’t strong enough, and for the second goal he’s stood five yards behind the defensive line. Away from home his technical quality sinks to the floor and the very basics of left-back play escape him.

With the way the game was playing out he needed to come off. He was a fish out of water. Yet doing so was a double-edged sword.

Mikel Arteta‘s decision to bring him off at half-time was a huge call. That’s now 80 minutes played in his last two starts for the club. As woeful as he was, with Tierney’s injury it’s now likely that Arsenal will need Nuno over the next nine Premier League games. Quite possibly in all of them.

What is clearly an already frail mentality could have been dealt a hammer blow. He will need to pick himself up and recover from this, but is the damage done for this season? The pressure he will be feeling under normal circumstances is exacerbated by the necessity to be winning every possible point in order to secure Champions League football.

Arsenal went to a 3-1-4-2 shape and there was no place for him as a winger, defender or otherwise.

Arteta played down the decision and insisted it was purely tactical, and while that can be the case, the player he chose to sacrifice was Nuno. It can be dressed up as well as possible, but Nuno knows.

The manager really didn’t have much choice, however; Nuno looked hopelessly out of his depth and it leaves a major decision to be had on where the team goes from here in terms of shape and personnel. Nuno’s role in that has diminished even further.