Last season, a meltdown in the home straight cost Arsenal a place in the Champions League, this season it may well cost them the Premier League title.
I’m reluctant to use the word ‘bottled’ when it comes to how we’ve performed in this campaign but, reflecting on how we’ve let it slide in these last three matches, it wouldn’t be far wrong – we’ve faltered when it mattered most.
Although there was a certain inevitability around the trip to the Etihad next week, we had at least to go there with a win over Southampton – the league’s worst side – with our place in the Champions League confirmed and with the small ounce of momentum that a win can provide.
Instead, we allowed the iron grip of fear to get a hold around our necks and throttle all of the verve, intensity, and dynamism from our game. From the first minute, the tone was set and we never really recovered.
A brilliant – and yet desperate – late rally almost snatched victory at the death and, on another day, in another universe, we may well have done it. It wasn’t to be last night, however, and, in truth, you can’t go around conceding three goals to any team and expect to get a result – bottom of the league or otherwise.
When it comes down to it, that’s what has caused our wheels to fall off. Despite all the goals, all the chances, all the hard work up front – our ability to defend as a cohesive unit has deserted us. In the last three games, we have conceded even goals. No team can do that and hope to claim maximum points, not even Manchester City.
The absence of William Saliba for those last three games has played a part in our downfall, of course, but we can’t be without one player and collapse so spectacularly. Our entire season shouldn’t depend on the availability of one 21-year-old centre back, however good he may be.
The reality is, silly mistakes, carelessness and trepidation have cost us every bit as much as Saliba’s absence. Again last night, under no pressure, Aaron Ramsdale gave the ball away in a suicidal area of the pitch and gifted Southampton their opening goal. And, just as his carelessness was punished against West Ham, so too was Thomas Partey guilty of a cheap giveaway against Southampton that led to a goal.
These sorts of errors simply weren’t happening even four or five games ago, now they are happening in every match. Lapses of concentration that are being punished to the absolute maximum.
When you’re in these straits, there is a fatalistic feel about things. Heads are quick to drop, eyes are quick to roll, panic sets in and we have seen that play out three times in three consecutive games now.
It wasn’t until all was lost against Southampton, in the deepest of deep despairs, that we were able to play with the sort of aggression and belief that we should have played with from the first second. We can’t go on like that.
We’ve come on strides and leaps and bounds in this campaign but some of the age old problems still haunt us. Some of the intangible elements of our recent past, factors we had hoped to have seen the back of this campaign, have reared their ugly heads at exactly the wrong time.
Remarkably, it is still in our gift to win the league without favours from anybody else but, given how desperate things have been of late, it feels like an impossible task. It feels like it’s going to take something extra, something we haven’t yet seen from this Arsenal side, something magical.
At the moment, that feels a long way off.
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