I don’t think I’ve ever seen a side be so comfortable, so dominant and yet somehow manage not to win.
But that was how it played out on Saturday evening as Aston Villa recovered from 2-0 down to snatch a point at the Emirates when, for all the world, they looked dead and buried.
And this wasn’t some display of tactical wizardry from Unai Emery, nor moments of sweeping individual brilliance from his charges – the facts are they were pretty average for everything but a 10-minute spell of the game.
Arsenal dropped points because they are knackered and because a stretched squad is at breaking point.
Thomas Partey shouldn’t really be anywhere near right back but, because of injuries to Ben White, Takehiro Tomiyasu and William Saliba, he was again forced into that position against Villa. And while it’s fine when we don’t have much defending to do (as we didn’t for large chunks of this match), the moment the screw is turned we find ourselves in trouble.
And so it was for both of Villa’s goals. The Ghanian was nowhere to be seen when Lucas Digne played in an excellent cross for Youri Tielemans and was then left for dead when a deep ball came in for Ollie Watkins and the equaliser.
It should be noted that, once again, we come up against an opponent who somehow managed to inflict maximum damage with the minimal number of chances but that is just how it has been this season. We toil for 90 minutes for scant reward while our opponents score a frighteningly high number of chances, often as high as 50 per cent.
But the fact remains that Villa simply wouldn’t have been a factor in this game if not for Partey being forced to play at right back. Of course, I am annoyed that his lapses in concentration cost us two goals but it wouldn’t be fair not to acknowledge the wider context; Partey is only there because we have precious few alternatives – if any.
When you flog players for 90 minutes every three days, over a period of months, cracks will start to appear. In seasons gone by, we managed to paper over those cracks. This time around, our luck has well and truly run out and the implications have been disastrous for our season.
After the game, the manager again strongly hinted that reinforcements are desperately needed but here we are, into the third week of this month and we have nothing but new injuries to show for our efforts. That it has been left so long is damning in and of itself. Even if we manage to get one or two bodies in now, you feel that the horse may already have bolted. We needed reinforcements weeks ago.
That’s not to say it shouldn’t still happen because there’s plenty still to fight for in this campaign but we are in danger of letting it all slip through our fingers because of our inaction. It can’t go on.
We’ve already seen the consequences of that inaction in matches against Newcastle, Manchester United and now Aston Villa, what we do from here will determine how committed the board and ownership are to saving what remains of this season.
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