Arsenal unbeaten in tricky November but it's time to start winning again
Although Arsenal began November with a win thanks to Mesut Ozil's mesmerising late strike in a 3-2 comeback against Ludogorets in the Champions League, they haven't won a game since: drawing the last three.
In Novembers past, that might have been a sign that things had gone very wrong. It's often been a month when Arsenal haven't just dropped points, but lost games and momentum along the way.
This time around, if there's not much in the way of positivity to be drawn from the performances, there certainly is from the fact they haven't lost a game either. Draws against Tottenham, Manchester United and PSG are actually a sign that there's more resilience to this side than previous iterations, and there is always confidence and belief when you don't lose.
If winning is described as a good habit for a team to get into, so is not losing. This season, Arsenal have the maturity and experience to cope better with poor performances and there's no doubt they've underperformed in their last three games.
The North London derby against Spurs was very flat; they were ineffectual against Manchester United at Old Trafford but had Olivier Giroud to thank for his late equaliser; while this week's Champions League draw with PSG was another game in which they failed to find a spark.
It means there's now a huge onus on the Gunners to marry an effective performance with three points against Bournemouth at the Emirates on Sunday afternoon. It's the first of what are winnable fixtures against opposition of slightly inferior quality, but if they want to overcome the Cherries, then Arsene Wenger has to help his team find its rhythm again.
The key area is central midfield, where the balance has not been quite right in recent weeks. Francis Coquelin and Aaron Ramsey played against PSG, while the former was paired with Mohamed Elneny in a "safety first" duo at Old Trafford. It wasn't as if either combination was completely dysfunctional, but neither was it anything more than adequate.
The obvious candidate to add something is the summer's £35 million signing Granit Xhaka. At his news conference on Friday, Wenger declared himself very happy with the Switzerland international's development but did admit he hasn't started as many games as he would have liked.
Whether it's a worry about his discipline and occasionally rash tackling, or something else entirely, it's hard to know, but if the former Borussia Monchengladbach captain can't get into the team for a home game against Bournemouth, then such concerns will only be exacerbated.
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