All Hail Leandro Trois-sard!

Well, that escalated quickly. Before the match, Leandro Trossard was a doubt, facing a late fitness test after also having missed the trip to Lisbon. Fast forward about 45 minutes from kickoff, and Trossard had notched tree assists and was unlucky not have more but for some wasteful finishing from his mates. He probably should have had a goal or two to his name, but let's not be churlish. Thanks in large part to his false-nining his way about the pitch, Fulham were thoroughly discombobulated to the point that Martin Ødegaard had time to take four touches in the box on his way to scoring our third goal of the half. This made Trossard the first player in Prem history to get a hat trick of asissts in the first half of an away game.

Everton 1-0 Arsenal: Player Rating & MOTM Poll Results

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53.7% of 614 voters gave our MOTM award to No One, who I believe is an Academy product making his first appearance in the top flight. In all seriousness, it's no surprise that so many of us felt this way after the goose egg we laid at Goodison. It's not just the result it but the nature of it; we never really seemed to find any traction and were outplayed for most of the match. The mood emanating from the squad afterward is a mixture of disappointment and defiance, and the mood emanating from fans seems to swing from despair to hope hourly. No one, except Arteta, escaped our wrath, with the highest-player rating of 5.74 going to Ramsdale. Arteta's 5.98 feels very generous considering how poorly prepared we seemed and how little our tactics changed over the course of the match. Ah, well. Let's put this behind us and move on.

Well, liquidate us and hand Man City the title. It's over.

1-0 to the Everton. Hm. Doesn't sound quite right on numerous levels. Still, they kicked us off the park and earned those three points. They were the better side—so much better, in fact, that they've exposed us once and for all as the frauds and pretenders that we've been since matchday one. It's now clear to all us deluded Gooners (is that a redundant term? It seems so...) just as it's been clear to every level-headed observed from Gary Neville to any Spud. Clearly, we've been riding on luck, and that luck has run out. It's only a matter of time before we tumble down the table to join the likes of Liverpool and Chelsea in midtable mediocrity. [shudder]. That is after all our level and it's about time we regress to the mean.

Everton 1-0 Arsenal: Vote for Player Ratings & MOTM.

Well, in the end, it was another former Burnley man who made the difference as James Tarkowski headed home from a corner to secure a shock win for Everton. Well, maybe not a shock, given that Everton outplayed us for long stretches, showing early signs that Dyche has reinvigorated this squad. They hustled and harried and harassed, and, for the first time in a long time, we really could not respond or rise to the occasion. It's a dispiriting result, considering the yawning gulf between us and them, but we had to know that we'd be facing a Toffees side different to the one that had won only three matches going into this one. For Dyche, it's only the second time in 16 tries that he's found a win against us, meaning he'll probably experience something akin to joy, or at least less misery than he's accustomed to. Well, the less said for now, the better. Let's get to the poll and rate the lads. If you want to see results as they roll in, click here. A nifty little graphic will be available later.

Let's make Sean Dyche miserable!

Ha. Joke's on me. He's already miserable, and that's not a joke at Everton's expense. I don't know if I've ever come across a more-miserable manager. Then again, I'd be miserable too if I had spent the last ten years of my life trying to manage Burnley, who somehow succeeded in making me fond for the good old days when it was Stoke's players who were maiming our players. That felt like a good old-fashioned rivalry, full of top-shelf bantz and good-natured...wait. Somewhere in the midst of taking the piss out of Dyche, I lost track and missed the mark. Let's re-focus here. Dyche may have been appointed on Monday, but that will have been enough time to instill his, um, tactics in the squad.