MIKEL ARTETA had warned us to expect the unexpected when he announced on Friday afternoon that he wanted to make Arsenal more unpredictable.

So maybe we shouldn’t have been quite so surprised when he dropped a major bombshell in their very first game of the new season.

Arsenal had a winning start to the Premier League season

Eddie Nketiah opened the scoring

Bukayo Saka added a second for Arsenal

He fired a brilliant effort past Matt Turner

Taiwo Awoniyi did get Forest back into the game late on

Thomas Partey starting the game at right-back, just as he had done against Forest in the penultimate game of last season, which ended in a 1-0 defeat for the Gunners.

But within ten minutes of the delayed kick-off he had swapped positions with Ben White and was playing centre-half.

And five minutes later, Partey was stepping into midfield alongside Declan Rice and suddenly Arsenal were playing with three at the back.

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It was all very Pep Guardiola and that certainly shouldn’t have surprised anyone at the Emirates because Arteta has been borrowing from his mentor’s playbook all year.

There was one early let-off when Orel Mangala’s clearing header passed right through the middle of the Arsenal defence to send Brennan Johnson haring in on goal.

The Forest striker missed his attempt wastefully since he was unable to take advantage of the communication error.

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After that, Steve Cooper’s team had to focus on limiting the damage as Arteta’s team broke out with goals from Eddie Nketiah and Bukayo Saka.

But now that Arteta has so many alternatives, no one can expect to be consistently present, thus Arsenal’s players will have to get used to the winds of change blowing around the Emirates.

And if Gabriel was feeling hard done by as he watched on from the subs’ bench, imagine how Kieran Tierney and Rob Holding must have been thinking after failing to even make the 20-man squad.

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Jurrien Timber was forced off with an injury on his Premier League debut

Takehiro Tomiyasu is another who has gone from stalwart to back-up in recent months, but at least he got a 40-minute run-out after Jurrien Timber limped off at the start of the second half.

The £34.5million Dutchman had injured himself making a yellow card challenge on Johnson just before the break.

So when he went down clutching the back of his leg with no one near him just after the restart, it was obvious that he was in trouble.

Timber had initially been signed from Ajax as a right-back, but with Oleksandr Zinchenko still recovering from a calf strain he has so far been operating on the left.

Declan Rice was one of three to make their Prem debut for the club

Kai Havertz was also handed a start by Mikel Arteta

Now it looks as though Arteta is going to have to come up with another defensive permutation.

And it was apparent that Gabriel was sent on to stabilize the situation when he needed to finish the game after Taiwo Awoniyi scored a consolation goal for Forest.

That goal revealed White’s lack of speed as Anthony Elanga had beaten him to the ball before Awoniyi’s goal.

And it created a situation that was considerably more difficult than it should have been for a squad that might just be considering starting over.