Former Arsenal defender Lee Dixon has singled out Thomas Partey for criticism following the 4-1 defeat to Manchester City.

Kevin De Bruyne ran rings around the Ghanaian international all evening and, while Dixon admits that the midfielder wasn’t helped by his teammates, someone of Partey’s experience should have done a better job:

“Partey, he needed help. He needed somebody to go. And if you’re an experienced midfield player, you should be able to work out certain things. But you are playing one of the world’s best team. So it’s very difficult. I don’t want to be too critical of him. But he lost the plot. He wasn’t picking up, he was getting runners running off him.”

“You might say he needed help. And possibly you might say that Arteta’s territory to say, ‘right, Xhaka, just go really tight and just plugs those holes and get City to play in front of you’. They were just playing on the back of Partey the whole of that first-half.”

As Dixon says, it is not fair to be overly harsh on Partey. The team’s performance as a whole was poor, and manager Mikel Arteta is probably more to blame in terms of how open things were in midfield.

However, Partey has shown in previous games this season that he can do the job of mopping up and breaking up attacks, whilst dominating his opponents.

Unfortunately, much like his teammates, his form has dropped off alarmingly in recent weeks, and the display at the Etihad was simply not good enough, especially as we know he can do so much better.