Southampton 1-1 Arsenal Man of the Match

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One early mistake, and everything went out of the window. Despite his decent performances early on this season and standout performance in the F.A. Cup final, Per Mertesacker officially ruled himself out of the running for man of the match just two minutes into yesterday’s game.
Similar to our game against Everton this season, Mertesacker seemed to be completely out of position which he paid the price for which almost cost us the game.
Even after that goal had gone in though, I wasn’t expecting that two of my three man of the match candidates to be players that had come off the bench but that’s how the game went.
First off though, I’ll start with someone who was in the game from minute one. In the first half, Mesut Ozil was probably our best performer.
Going forward we had to break down a tough Southampton defence but there were a few moments when we looked dangerous and Ozil was key in those moments.
From his shielding the ball when driving up the pitch to his movement off the ball on a counter attack as well as moving very well on the ball, the German stood out more than anyone on the pitch at that point.
Now onto the real game changers, and first up is Jack Wilshere. Still waiting for that first Premier League start of the season, he’s making it very hard for Wenger to leave him out any longer.
Once on the pitch Jack changed the dynamic, offering his usual game pushing up through the pitch he did what he could to affect the game late in the day and was very encouraging.
However, the biggest game changer on our side was Olivier Giroud. Playing understudy to Alexandre Lacazette yet again, Giroud showed the quality he still possesses by equalling Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s record of 17 Premier League goals as a substitute.
For most of the season so far, we haven’t seen as much of the Frenchman as we did last season but of late, with four goals in his last four games he really does look to be finding his form again with a great header to rescue a point for us and save the day.
As well as hitting Solskjaer’s record with that equaliser, Giroud also hit 10 goals beyond the 80^th minute-mark so hopefully he can keep it up in a fixture-heavy December.