Arsenal have lost their heads. There is no other rational explanation for how the Premier League leaders, for now at least, could blow a two-goal lead against a side who will cherish this 2-2 draw because it makes it that much less likely they will go down in history as statistically the worst team in this competition’s history.
Three years of second-placed finishes has led to a familiar refrain around Arsenal, that they are bottlers, a team chronically incapable of winning the biggest prizes. It had been, without wishing to put too fine a point on it, nonsense. The team of 2022-23 got way out ahead of their skis early on but never looked like one that could stay the course when the juggernaut of prime Manchester City built a head of steam. A year later, Mikel Arteta’s men were brilliant down the stretch, dropping only five points in their final 14 games. Unfortunately for them, City dropped four. In 2024-25, the title charge never got going because from early on, Arsenal found themselves banjaxed by injuries.
Now they are probably the best team in the land. That is how they got to the stage where they are five points clear with a game in hand, still the bookmakers’ favorites to win both the Champions League and the Premier League. Theirs is the best defense around and frankly, there is not that much evidence of a superteam to rival them, not when Manchester City haven’t really exploited the openings that the leaders keep giving them.
This is the truth most fair-minded observers would offer up over Arsenal. It would appear that Arsenal’s truth is rather different. They play like a team who have ingested the worst that social media has to say about them. A team that believe there is something innate within them that is not within champions, who see the last seven games not as the sort of wobble they can get away with this year but a sign of the doom that is soon to come. When misfortune comes their way, they respond as if it were inevitable.
And this was another game with a healthy slice of bad luck. In the 56th minute, Piero Hincapie was adjudged to have been onside when he darted onto Gabriel’s through ball and clipped a shot over Jose Sa, at that point, this had the feel of a professional away performance. Yes, the visitors had been under Wolverhampton Wanderers’ cosh to start the second half, but this is the Premier League. Even the easy games are never that easy.
Still, there was nothing to fear. All Arsenal were allowing Wolves was pot sho… aaah, there’s another one of them flying past David Raya. Hugo Bueno, making amends for playing Hincapie on in spectacular fashion. Make that six Premier League goals conceded where the shot has an xG value of 0.04 or lower. No team in the division has conceded more. Now, maybe, maybe, maybe there is something in how Arteta sets up his backline. Even a defense as good as Arsenal’s has to allow something. Could Hincapie have been out quicker? Should he not have shown the out-of-position left back the outside rather than inviting the shot?
Maybe, maybe, maybe but this is still the sort of chance that flies high, wide and not particularly handsome far more often than not. This just seems to be the year where that doesn’t happen to Arsenal. The xG value of the 20 shots they have conceded is just 3.16. Since 2020-21, there has not been such a discrepancy for any team in the Premier League.
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So, of course, it is possible to frame this game as another in the long line of footballings that have happened to Arsenal in this run of 10 points gained and 11 dropped over their last seven matches. You might as well file this alongside the Matheus Cunha and Patrick Dorgu thunderbolts or the almighty fright that Eli Junior Kroupi gave to this team. The Arsenal players certainly did.
“Any question, any criticism, any opinion, you have to take it on the chin today,” said Arteta. “That’s it. Any bullet, take it, because we didn’t perform at the level that is required.”
This was a group of contenders for the biggest titles in the sport who were resolutely unable to take control of a contest against an already relegated opponent. In the half hour between Bueno’s goal and Tom Edozie’s equalizer, they did not allow a single shot. They only took one though and found themselves outpossessed and outpassed, 106 to 104.
On the touchline, Arteta was pleading with his players to calm down but they showed no signs of listening. Too many hoofed clearances to Viktor Gyokeres and latterly Gabriel Jesus. Martin Zubimendi may not have been deployed as a Rodri-style 100-pass-a-game metronome but something has gone wrong when he completes only 12 in half an hour, especially when Declan Rice’s radar is so off. Might this have been different if Martin Odegaard were fit? He is the man who can get Arsenal to control the game, to kill a contest with a few hundred passes. Wasn’t the whole point of this summer’s spending, however, to kick the reliance on individuals?
Without control and without threat, Arsenal demanded high standards of their defense. They cannot always live up to those. Gabriel and Raya got themselves in a mess, the ball dropping for Edozie to strike on his debut. There was no fight from Arsenal in the minutes that followed, well at least until the referee had blown up and Jesus shoved Yerson Mosquera.
Raising yourself only after the battle is lost, we have seen that before in this competition and it is invariably from the teams who are bottling the title race. It’s Kevin Keegan ranting at the Sky cameras, it’s William Gallas indulging himself in a little sulk on the St. Andrew’s field. It wasn’t really Arteta’s Arsenal. At least it wasn’t before Wednesday. And yet already this feels like a team who expect to etch themselves into the wrong sort of history books.
