The pitch at Burnley

And so we continue to climb slowly out from the trough of despond into which we had descended after the first three games of the season.

A splendid Martin Odegaard free kick was enough to secure the points away at Burnley yesterday in an unspectacular game during which our forward line failed to fire on all cylinders.

Afterwards Mikel Arteta commented on the fact that Burnley had not mown the pitch prior to the game, meaning that the grass was longer than it should be for a typical EPL fixture.

Longer-than-usual grass will play havoc with a team that likes to play the ball on the ground (a team like, er, Arsenal), but will have less of a negative impact on a team that likes to pump long balls into the box (such as, er, Burnley).

If this really was an issue it may go some way to explaining the very obvious failings in our attack.

Numerous times in the game we created lovely moves and opened up Burnley only for the final pass to be overhit or underhit.

We can only assume that our players were trying to navigate the unreliable pace of...