What a strange weekend! Hard to put that one in to words, but I’ll give it a go. It went from elation, at not only seeing Manchester City drop points, but to actually lose fairly comfortably, which gave Arsenal the opportunity to open up a 9 point gap over City when they travelled to Nottingham Forest a few hours later.
Arsenal then put in a pretty insipid performance at Forest, that although probably should have yielded all three points, if we were a bit more clinical, that ultimately lacked the hunger and passion that you would expect to see from the team with the opportunity that we had been presented in front of us. Arsenal played out their second nil-nil game in a row, in the league, to edge a further point ahead of Manchester City, extending the lead to 7 points, even though it felt very much like two points dropped.
Now this one really hurt. Not like Villa away. It could take years away to erase the pain of that one. Yet it was still really painful. I tried to be an adult about this and take a step back and work out why this away draw in the Premier League, a fixture that we’ve historically struggled with over recent seasons, felt like such a loss.
There’s always that nagging feeling in the back of your mind that when your rivals slip up, you MUST take advantage. We didn’t do that when Brighton came away from the Etihad with a point a few weeks ago, so the draw with Liverpool was another painful one. Failing to win at Forest felt like Groundhog day yet, it wasn’t, was it? We did take advantage. Certainly not in the way that we should or that all Arsenal fans were dreaming we would, but we did take advantage. By bettering City’s result, we pulled away by another point. Not enough? Didn’t feel like it at the time, but on reflection, it’s an extra point and that lead of 7 points does like pretty good right now. Especially given the manner of City’s defeat and their struggles that year.
I then tried to dig deep into my own subconscious and work out why this point gained felt so bad and I think it comes down to one word for me, personally – panic. I really wanted to win the game to make that gap between us and City as big as possible, for obvious reasons, yet the biggest reason is that I want to get to a stage where I can enjoy this title race. After the trauma of the last three seasons, it really feels like we absolutely HAVE to win the league this year. Therefore every setback or time that we let City off triggers something in my brain from these past few campaigns and sews the seeds in my head that I think most of us Gooners fear the most – what if City click into gear and hunt us down again? That’s it isn’t it? That’s certainly it for me.
Trying to think about the whole thing logically, it was still an opportunity missed, but I don’t think this result is going to be fatal for our league title aspirations. If things go badly, it certainly could, but I ultimately don’t think it will. There were some positives to take from the game. Defensively we looked back to our best. Forest are a dangerous team, especially in wide areas and they are hard to beat at the City Ground, yet they failed to have single shot on target. That’s two league games in a row, including the Liverpool game at home, which feels reminiscent of the early season league form.
The one real concern is that we seem to be struggling a little bit with the balance as the goals have dried up a little bit. I believe Mikel Arteta will resolve this issue and get us back on track in an attacking sense, so I fully believe that this is just a little attacking blip. If you put Kai Havertz and Bukayo Saka into that team against Forest, I think we win that game. We still managed to miss a couple of sitters and an open goal don’t forget, as well as being denied a really good shout for a penalty, so I’ve come away feeling quite positive about the whole thing.
Aston Villa were in line to be the big winners of the weekend and then they also went on to lose their home fixture as well, ending their long unbeaten home record to leave Arsenal extending their lead of the two teams closest to them by a point. Not bad, all things considered. Now we need to push on and really turn the screw in the next few fixtures.