Most rational Arsenal fans out there know that any faint hopes of a first Premier League title are now dead.
If they were already remote heading into the Brighton game, they are now so infinitesimally small that it would require the Hubble space telescope just to be able to perceive them. It is still mathematically possible but the sums required for it to occur are beyond comprehension. Forget it.
Dead as our chances may be, however, there are still points to play for and a job to be done. Our haul of 81 points is good – good enough to have won the league in some seasons not long ago – but 87 points sounds and looks a lot better.
That is to say, there’s still something to be achieved this season, even if it’s just pride. What we don’t want now is to fade away into nothingness, not leave a bitter taste in the mouths after a brilliant season.
So much hard work has been put in to get us where we are now, so many highlights have filled this season, that it would be wasteful for it to be frittered away in an end-of-season shoulder-shrug. Sure, it doesn’t really matter if we lose our next two matches or win them but, at the same time, it does matter.
Nottingham Forest are a side fighting for their very lives and, to that end, I would expect them to go hammer and tongs at Arsenal to get a result. Why wouldn’t you? The Gunners, they will reason, will be at their lowest ebb and eminently more beatable than they were even a fortnight ago. Three points on Saturday would strike an enormous blow in their bid for survival.
The Gunners must resist the pressure to simply fold and let it all happen around them. They’re better than that.
Injuries to Oleksandr Zinchenko and Gabriel Martinelli are season-ending, the manager confirmed this week, so it means an opportunity opens up for those on the bench to get some minutes and leave a mark, however small, on the manager. I expect we’ll see Kieran Tierney again at left back, with Leandro Trossard most likely on the left of the midfield.
It might even be an opportunity for the likes of Fabio Vieira and Emile Smith Rowe to get some minutes in the midfield and Eddie Nketiah to get some time again up top, although I remain doubtful Mikel Arteta would make such wholesale changes to his side whatever the circumstance. He will view this, I’m sure, as a game like any other -an opportunity to get three points, which is fair enough.
It does feel important, however, that those aforementioned players are given some meaningful time. By any measure, none have had the greatest of seasons, but the road to recovery starts somewhere and a match with a little less pressure might present a good opportunity for them.
Our final match of the season is next week against Wolves at the Emirates and that will surely be an opportunity for the fans to say ‘thank you’ for a memorable campaign – the best for many years. But it will be nicer still if we can go into the match with the mood and our heads held high.
Allowing Forest to bludgeon us into submissions will take a little gloss off of things and that would be a shame. Let’s hope then, for the sort of performance that does justice to our efforts this season.
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