Amid the sense of disbelief and frustration that Arsenal had snatched a second successive draw from the jaws of victory at West Ham, Granit Xhaka was on hand to add a dose of pragmatism. “If something is not going well, it is easy to show the finger to someone else,” he said of their faltering title push. “We took this challenge up until now and nobody was thinking about this before the season. Let’s refresh everything now.”
The path towards an extraordinary achievement has narrowed considerably and the annoyance for Mikel Arteta will be that it did not have to be this way. There was a moment not long before they let West Ham back into proceedings when the silence around the London Stadium verged on eerie: Arsenal were passing their way towards a victory of consummate ease and, in hindsight, perhaps they were lulled by the occasion’s near-total lack of edge. Neither their hosts nor those in the stands were evincing genuine belief that the afternoon might turn on its head.
What happened next was another lesson that Arsenal have not earned the right to decide when they can cruise. Second-guessing what is going through a player’s mind can be a lazy form of analysis but it was hard not to conclude a measure of complacency had set in. West Ham are not Liverpool and their ground is hardly Anfield: perhaps Arsenal would be able to declare early and conserve energy as they had in a cakewalk at Fulham five weeks previously.
It will exasperate Arteta that, just as Xhaka’s set-to with Trent Alexander-Arnold shifted the tone a week before, another senior player contrived an avoidable error this time. Thomas Partey is 29 and schooled in Diego Simeone’s unceasing approach at Atlético Madrid: he should have had no business trying to execute a difficult flick past Declan Rice, West Ham’s best player, deep inside his own half and was promptly punished for his hubris. While a young side’s callowness in a fight for first place is a go-to explanation for loss of nerve, senior players should set a better tone.
“It is not about the mentality: for sure, it is not,” Xhaka said. In the bigger picture he is probably right. Arsenal remain top of the Premier League and with the title in their hands. It has been a phenomenal achievement to outpace Manchester City to this point and perhaps the more important observation should be that, such is the dominance of Pep Guardiola’s side, any title race nowadays needs two almost perfect contenders. In a truly healthy league there should be little hand-wringing when a contender that has won 23 matches out of 31 drops its level sufficiently to draw a couple.
None of that changes the fact Arsenal’s two slip-ups have been avoidable; nor does it alter the suspicion there was a mental hangover in east London from the previous week’s spiralling. Arteta did not make such huge strides with this squad in order to throw in the towel by mid-April: as Xhaka suggested, this is the time to reset and work out how best to exploit a still commanding position over the final seven games.
The fact Southampton are their next opponents, visiting the Emirates Stadium on Friday, should mean a few cobwebs are blown away before the pivotal trip to City in nine days’ time. Arsenal are desperate to return William Saliba to action at the Etihad Stadium and anyone watching Rob Holding, who can defend a penalty box with the best of them but struggles badly when pulled around in the channels, attempting to handle Michail Antonio would understand why. Saliba also offers a technical security Arsenal have lacked in his absence and the same goes for Oleksandr Zinchenko, who missed the West Ham game as a precaution. While Kieran Tierney would walk into most Premier League lineups, he is manifestly far less comfortable than the Ukrainian in drifting inside to help make the play.
If Saliba and Zinchenko are fully fit, Arsenal have a chance next week. But that sentence points to a lack of squad depth, certainly in comparison with that enjoyed by City. They paid for that last year when throwing away a Champions League spot: this time around they have strengthened their bench but perhaps not to the extent required of champions.
At West Ham, chasing the win, Arteta threw on Reiss Nelson and Fábio Vieira: the former is short of the required level even if he conjured what may yet prove a winner for the ages against Bournemouth, while the latter is not yet trusted to slot straight into Arsenal’s patterns. It was strange to see Emile Smith Rowe, fully fit and steeped in the team’s approach but kicking his heels, unused when his dynamism might have shifted them up a gear. Making the best use of his reserves may be as important for Arteta as cajoling the right tune from his old hands over the next month.
“If someone thinks that we go through this season in the last eight games without any dropped points or winning and smashing the teams, I think you are not in the right position,” Xhaka said. He is far from wrong. But Arsenal have used up most of their lives as league leaders and the task for Arteta is to recapture the relentlessness that has hallmarked most of their season. If he succeeds, it will be too early to write the obituaries just yet.
