I won’t look back on this game with any great fondness.
The only thing of importance or interest to emerge from it was the three points and, at this stage of the season, that’s all that matters.
With the league title race over, our focus is now on keeping those sides below us firmly where they belong and, in squeezing past Chelsea, we managed just that.
Pleasing, I suppose, is the largely event-free nature of the performance from Arsenal, with the visitors largely unable to produce enough quality to force a breakthrough. Yes, there were some moments of good fortune for the Gunners (ahem, David Raya) but there were also some pretty presentable opportunities that we could have done better with ourselves.
As it is, we found a way to score this week and, with our forward line as it is, that’s to be celebrated.
I don’t think it’s a co-incidence that the goal, when it came, was from a set piece – an area of our play that opponents have struggled with this season whether we’ve been at full strength or otherwise. It feels like something of a leveller; it doesn’t matter who is playing or who is injured, our prowess from the dead ball means any number of players can hurt you.
And it is a good job that remains the case because we conspired to waste some open-play opportunities that, on another day, we might have needed to go in. I’m not going to re-litigate our injury problems again here but we continue to see the impact week-in, week-out.
A word, though, for Mikel Merino who, despite being a fish out of water, is competing manfully and, more than that, is winning us football matches. It’s not the first set of three points we owe to his willingness to adapt and his ability to finish. Who’d have thought a deep-lying midfielder would be the one to step up amid a striker injury-crisis?
He now has five Premier League goals and an assist to his name in this campaign, which is an excellent return given the circumstances. We’ve needed someone to get on the end of chances, to add a finishing touch in tight situations, and he has done that and more. It’s been remarkable and, I think, vastly unappreciated.
As for the league table, victory keeps us four points clear of Nottingham Forest in third, nine points clear of Chelsea in fourth and 10 clear of City in fifth. It’s not set in stone, but 70 points is an unofficial benchmark for Champions League qualification. Four wins from our last nine games should see us over the line.
And I think that’s pretty much how we need to view what remains of this league season; getting over the line. The Chelsea game was far from a classic. It was bitty, ill-tempered and low on quality. Given our injury concerns, our recruitment failures and the relative lack of motivation given all that has transpired above us, I think that may become par for the course.
It’s difficult to pick yourself up and find ways to win when you’ve suffered such large setbacks but the manager will be working hard to do that. He won’t have any such trouble in the Champions League, of course, but he will be acutely aware that work needs to be done in the nine league games still to come.
There will be times when his team will need to dig in or, at the very least, play a little better than they did against Chelsea.
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