Many writers have summed up the reasons why we lost. Arseblog said it best the day after, Slack Arsenal taught a footballing lesson. The plain truth is that Man United wanted it more. Online Gooner had the best technical rundown of why Man United’s use of a winger put Clichy on his heels and why a winger is different from playing someone out wide.

To diagnose the problems and move towards fixing them in time will take Arsene Wenger much time and thought. Plus, he probably won’t agree that these are the problems and chock up our defeat to simply poor playing. To be exact, he now claims that it was a case of still feeling the effects of our Champions League defeat last May. Whatever. Do these players even remember that game? Probably not.

But, in hopes to summarize our shortcomings as I see them, I’ve summed up the following three in sucessive importance (worse to worst).

Left-hand side. Man United were not the first side to figure this out. Last Sunday, Nani was being hailed as the return of Cristinao Ronaldo. As gifted as he may be, the comparison falls very short when you look at how he’s played in other games. The truth is, left-back Gael Clichy and left-mid Samir Nasri made it look easy for Nani. Their attempts at double teaming him, combined with the jeering crowd at the Emirates, made Nani’s determination more effective and troublesome. Several times Clichy was simply outrun and Nasri watched.

Clichy is just coming back from a long injury and may get better as time goes on, given that he hasn’t shown himself to be that much better than the youngster, Armand Traore, he replaced. The most promising left-sided combination so far has been in our first encounter with Bolton where Traore stayed as left-back and Clichy came on for Rosicky (72nd minute) and played in front of Traore at left-mid/forward. My confidence in Nasri is beginning to wane as its never clear if he’s going to give as much as he should nor whether he’s going to help in defense.

Denilson. Its been a week since our defeat and hopefully its been a good recovery period for Alex Song, coming back from the African Cup of Nations, because we sure do need him on the top of his game to run the midfield. Its clear that Song and Aaron Ramsey should be the midfield duo because Denilson isn’t making the transition from young starlet to seasoned veteran that he should be making. He either needs to have some soul-searching on the bench or look to be positioned in another role besides provider on this team. The second goal for Man United came down to his give-away that resulted in a transition the other way, and that was just the most glaring example of his lack of determination.

Goal Keeper. I don’t remember a time in my 13 year history as an Arsenal supporter of there being more clammering by fans for a player to be benched (well, maybe Eboue last season). Its just atrocious that Wenger has allowed Manuel Almunia to be in goal for the time he has been. Of course, there should be trepidation about putting someone as young as Fabianski between the pipes for a match like Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, but Almunia’s confidence has got to be shot and he shouldn’t be risked. Not only does he score own-goals for Man United (more than 1 this season) but it seems like Vermaelen and Gallas don’t have any confidence in him either. I wonder how many points dropped are due to his own-goals and allowing for things to happen that shouldn’t. We need to have someone else back there immediately. This is the most pressing issue for this team.

While these are the three most important deficiencies that need to be addressed and fixed for the Chelsea match tomorrow, there are other minor issues.

Cesc Fabregas must have a good game against Chelsea and while he had glimmers against Man United, their defensive mids did a good job of shutting him down.

Andrei Arshavin must put the ball on frame. In the first 30 minutes against United, he was turning their defenders one way or another but couldn’t even put the ball on goal. If he gets the time and space against Chelsea, he needs to get it there.

Wenger thinks we’re still in a good position and if we can do some damage at Stamford Bridge tomorrow, we’ll be back in the race. I’m sure every Man United fan will be cheering for our side. I don’t know if we’ve got the spirit or the heart to pull together. We’ve got the talent, now its up the players to put my scepticism where it belongs – the trash heap.

Mikey Stafford (The Guardian) gives the best all-around synopsis of the match.

Gill Clark (goal.com) gives accolades to Denilson and Abou Diaby for their performances.

David Young (ESPN Correspondent) calls the team’s performance pragmatic and efficient rather than spectacular and breathtaking. Young points us to the next four games, where 3 of them are at home. Then, starting on Jan 31, we face Man United, Chelsea, and Liverpool within a space of 11 days.

In the postgame interview, when asked about the first goal, Arsene admits that Denilson wasn’t going to take the free kick. Sure glad he did!

Abou Diaby redeemed himself in this game. He’s gotten back into the starting line-up because of injury. He seems to have gotten his confidence back, after the atrocious own-goal against Manchester United.

Samir Nasri excelled at controlling the ball. Slowly but surely, Nasri has shown some grit this season. In last bit of the second half, there was an incident where it was alleged that Nasri purposely stepped on Richard Garcia’s foot, after Arsenal were awarded a free kick. The Hull players shouldn’t have been standing there in the first place and Garcia made a meal out of what looked like an accidental toe step. After a long scuffle, Stephen Hunt and Nasri were both given yellow cards. Hunt’s tactics in this game were scandalous. He tried to push guys off the ball whenever the chance arose. In one person, he’s what Wenger calls “anti-football”. The fact that he was involved in the melee should tell you where the blame lies (just ask Petr Cech).

The first goal was scored by a Denilson freekick right before half time. It was a wonderful display of power and pace. If you’re going to pick any place for a freekick, that was the place to take it.

Steve Bennett, the referee, did a terrible job in this match. I can’t believe he claimed that Silvestre was holding a Hull City player’s shirt. I understand that a referee might want to make amends for something he missed, but to fabricate a penalty when there wasn’t one is just lame. In the 56th minute, Almunia saved the ensuing penalty kick, taken by Marcio Geovanni. Justice was served.

Eduardo did lots of hard work but couldn’t put any of his chances away. Finally, he was gifted a cross right in front of the goal by Diaby in the 59th minute. Song and Diaby worked some magic to get into the box with the ball, then it was up to Eduardo to not mess up the tap-in.

Abou Diaby had to score the final goal. He just had to get on the scoresheet. If there was anyone who deserved to score in the game, it was him. In the 80th minute, he got the end of a through ball into the box, outmaneuvered the defender and slammed it home.

Hull City play a very good style of football. With the exception of Stephen Hunt, Hull are a very entertaining team and I wish them all the best in staying in the Premiership.

This victory moved us back into 3rd place. Next up will be Aston Villa and the game that I think will decide how we finish this season. Its a deciding moment. We play them again at the end of January. More on that later.

While Arsenal possessed the ball well, this game was settled by set pieces. The first goal was a master strike by Denilson to curl Fabregas’ side pass into the upper left corner. But, it wasn’t the dagger that ended the possibility of an Everton comeback. The 2nd and 3rd goals did that. Both centerbacks, first Vermaelen, then Gallas, headed the ball home on well-orchestrated set pieces by Arsenal, not so well defended by Everton. One team has been practicing these, the other not. After those two goals, any confidence left in Everton was gone. The rest of the goals would come on counter attacks, because Everton was pushing forward. This is what Wenger’s Arsenal does best and its been too long since we’ve seen it happen.

If you go back 3 or 4 seasons, you’ll remember that the way other teams figured out how to stop Arsenal when they were in the mood was to take them out of it by being overly physical. Its part of the English game that a team can push and shove a team with superior ball skills and technique. Its looked upon as opposing “tactics”. Manchester United were the first to employ it. Sir Alex Ferguson knew he couldn’t beat the Arsenal team that had gone on a 49 game unbeaten run by just playing football and so enabled his team to muscle their way to victory. Others (to name a few, Chelsea, Bolton, and any team managed by Sam Alyrdice) have tried the same. Credit should be given to David Moyes and the team he put on the field Saturday for not doing the same. But then, its been awhile since another team needed to employ this tactic.

This should be the season where Arsene Wenger’s plan for this team shows its full potential. After the 2004 Invincibles, he began a work of building a culture and program around his style of all-around football. Now he’s got a complete and youthful team to show it. I hope he’s got a plan for controlling the ball and game when things get rough, when teams decide they have to go back to the imposing game of physical intimidation.

And, even though the flowing free-form game of old seems to be back in this squad, there are still questions to be answered about the defense. Vermaelen and Gallas did a great job as central defenders but (1) they didn’t have someone like Drogba or Rooney to contend with, and (2) neither of them are very tall and imposing themselves. Both play the role of speedy, mobile centerbacks very well, although Gallas, at his age, will probably start to wear over a long season.

In any regard, it was a magical game and was a great start to the new campaign. Champions League football against Celtic on Tuesday (2:45 pm EST, Fox Soccer Channel here in the States).

1 down, 37 to go.