Carroll leap forces Gunners to reassess

SOME defeats during a long season are gone and forgotten in an instant, others are quickly dismissed as ‘just one of those days’; but Arsenal’s set-back against Newcastle United yesterday is the kind of defeat that requires a complete and total reassessment of how the campaign is being approached.

Without doubt the result was a disappointment for a team aiming to peg back Chelsea at the top of the Premier League, but it was the nature of the performance – and ease with which Newcastle stifled the home side – that left the even bigger mark on Arsenal’s psyche.

And Arsene Wenger knows it.