Mikel Arteta made his first start for Arsenal this season against Dinamo Zagreb but the captain was dejected after we lost 2-1.

The midfielder was given a chance to start over Francis Coquelin, who’s been a main feature in the first 11 since Arteta got injured last season. However, the match, which should have been winnable, didn’t quite go to plan and the Croatian team saw us coming a mile away.

Speaking after the match, Arteta made it clear that although we did have chances and have time to come back, we just weren’t good enough.

“We have so many games coming up,” the Spaniard said. “The manager said that he was going to make a few changes and I think that we were still good enough to compete with a Dinamo Zagreb side. We had the chances but we didn’t take them. The manager tried to create the best balance for the game but we didn’t make the most of it.”

Arteta continued, “You always have that concern when you are dominated against. We were 1-0 down and we had 10 men. We had to take risks by playing with three at the back, and we knew that we needed to score goals while still remaining strong at the back.”

A real turning point in the game was Olivier Giroud’s red card. After receiving the first yellow for talking back to the referee, the striker had his card marked. However, the 28-year-old continued to live on the edge and soon received a second yellow after catching one of the Zagreb players.

“We go game by game,” said Arteta. “I think we created enough chances in the first 20 minutes to go one or 2-0 up. It was very disappointing to not be in that position. After Olivier’s sending off the game changed completely. We tried to get back but we couldn’t in the end.”

It’s good to see the captain highlighting this as a one of the reasons we found it hard to fight back once we were 2-0 down. As the leader, he needs to be one of the first people, after the manager, to have a word with Oli and let him know his behaviour, whether he should have been sent off or not, needs to be sorted out.