Well that didn’t go accordingly to plan!
There’s not much to add on what that result at the Etihad has done to our season and how pivotal it was, but we have to pick ourselves up, as a club, and go again.
In most seasons, if someone had come to you in August and said you would be level on points with Manchester City with 5 games to go and a more favourable running, I think the vast majority of Gooners would take it. Throw in a Champions League Semi-Final to boot and I think the uptake would be even greater. We are not in a terrible position.
The context is what is killing us right now, as we all know that it shouldn’t be this close. The Bournemouth game was much more disappointing, in terms of application, performance and all round shock of the result, than yesterday. We can go further back and pick out other results where we failed to add to our lead at the top of the table (we don’t need to scratch at all wounds, when we have such gaping wounds open already!) or dropped points carelessly. The damage was done before we arrived in Manchester yesterday afternoon and we can’t go back and change anything so what’s next? Have Arsenal bottled it? Have we thrown it away? Is everything lost? I don’t think it is.
We’ve now put the title back in Manchester City’s hands, yet, crucially, it’s still in ours as well. It feels like we’re back in that same old situation of hoping other teams do us a favour – and we still are to a certain degree – but the twist this year is, if we win our last five games and score a heap load of goals in the process – we’ll sit top of the pile come the end of May.
Ahead of yesterday’s game, I wasn’t massively hopeful of a positive result, given the momentum of Manchester City and our recent slump, but I did set out two things that just couldn’t happen. 1) We can’t get hammered and concede allow a big swing in the goal difference and 2) We can’t lose it in this last minute and be emotionally traumatised for the rest of the season.
The result didn’t go our way, but my two stipulations from above were avoided as requested and we got one further swing in our favour…we actually played pretty well!
Don’t get me wrong, I know we’re in a results business at this stage of the season, but I think that performance should not be overlooked. I think we proved to ourselves and to Manchester City, that we’re not finished yet. We do have fight left in us and we play to take this right to the wire.
The optimistic Arsenal fans will point out that Manchester’s run in contains more than a few banana skins, with three of the teams fighting for European places still to come in Brentford, Bournemouth and Everton, along with Aston Villa. I do buy into this theory to a point, but it’s worth noting that Newcastle are no mugs and we have to get past them as well, so it’s not all sunshine and lollipops in the Arsenal garden.
The problem is, can Manchester City win all of those games if they continue in this fine? Yes, yes they absolutely can. Even though there is tricky games in there, you still back Manchester City to do enough to get over the line, as they’ve done it so many times down the years. However, they don’t just have to win those games, they have to outscore Arsenal and hope we don’t win our games as well. That’s the slither of hope. That’s the silver lining. That’s why I’ve not turned off my phone until July just yet. It’s not a foregone conclusion. It is still in our hands. It can be done, so let’s take the performance, add a bit better finishing to it and finish the season as strong as possible and see where we end up.
Onto the game itself, there’s going to be a lot of talk about Arsenal bottling it and we have to take that on the chin, but I’m not going to be reading into too much of the Manchester City hype train that the media are peddling right now. People will point to players like Bernado Silva playing us off the park and Rodri once again repelling the Arsenal attack (single-handedly if you read some of the British tabloids!) and how they were just immense and showed the spirit champions and ‘insert cliche about warriors here’ and ‘insert cliche about mentality monsters here’ and so on.
Some of that is true, I think. Fair enough. My question would be that, did the Rodri let Eberechi Eze take a shot that hit the inside of the post, as he knew that would happen or did Bernado Silva let Kai Havertz run clean through as he knew Donarumma would save his shot or was it the City strength of character that let Kai Havertz have a free header in the 95th minute to earn a point and with that the likely the title?! The narratives are being written based on the result, not based on what actually played out on the pitch. That’s why none of it is worth reading or listening to. City got away with one. A rather big one at that!! Hopefully we’ve given the teams left to play City a bit of a guide on how to get at them, as it wasn’t mentality monsters that got them over the line, it was Kai Havertz’s finishing.
Keep the faith Gooners!! We’re not done yet.