COMMENT: Four points dropped in a week. Twice blowing a 2-0 lead. If Arsenal's players were getting bored with this title race. Complacent, as some are claiming. They've certainly found a way to get themselves motivated again...
Complacency? C'mon. Can it be as simple as that? Wiping the floor with Liverpool at Anfield. Having West Ham players admit they feared a cricket score at London stadium. Yet, both games finished with a share of the spoils? There has to be more to it than simply the players, as a collective, consciously going through the motions after zipping to an early 2-0 lead.
As we say, after the score draw at Liverpool - which we'd argue was a good point for the Prem leaders - Arsenal were ferocious at West Ham on Saturday. There's no other way to describe it. Such were those early exchanges that the opposition were fearing the worst.
“To be honest, I was afraid of this," Irons fullback Vladimir Coufal later confessed, admitting he and his teammates were looking to eachother for guidance, "it was like the momentum from Newcastle. We were 2-0 down against one of the best teams in the world."
They were there to be taken. But Arsenal's game-management let them down. Mikel Arteta would later describe it as a loss of "purpose". Just as at Anfield, Arsenal's players, their manager argued, appeared lost trying to manage a 2-0 lead.
It wasn't complacency. It was experience. Know-how, Arteta reasoned - which this column would agree with. "When a team is there for the killing, you have to kill it," the manager said in the aftermath. It's a learning experience for a young team still at the beginning of their cycle. Like at Anfield, they didn't wilt. They didn't let the home support rattle them. Arsenal gave as good as they received in that second-half. But in the clinches. At critical moments. They lacked that "ruthless" streak, as their manager emphasised in the aftermath.
Some are arguing Arteta needs to take responsibility for this past week. The decision to stick with a largely unchanged XI. To not intervene in key moments in both games. Some, including Invincible Emmanuel Petit, say Arteta should be doing more in such situations.
But a check on the make-up of Arsenal's substitutes on Saturday is proof enough of how well Arteta has managed his squad this season. He doesn't have the deep bench of Manchester City. There's kids. Rookies. And senior players called in from the cold. Jakub Kiwior and Reuell Walters were his two defensive substitutes at West Ham. You had an underdone Kieran Tierney filling in for Oleks Zinchenko at left-back. And it can be argued Rob Holding, introduced in the absence of William Saliba, is now feeling the effects of entering a title race cold at this stage of the season.
Could Tierney and Holding been better served with rotating through the XI before Christmas? Petit does have a point. But like with his team, Arteta is in unchartered waters. There can't really be regrets as he's learning along the way. Which of course begs the question: is this reason enough to write Arsenal off?
As their captain, Martin Odegaard, said in the post-match on Sunday, "We have to remember we are still top of the league with everything in our own hands". Indeed - and we'd add one more thing, points were dropped, but they didn't lose this past week. A score draw at Anfield. The same at a rampant London stadium. Those two points still have Arsenal four clear of Manchester City having played a game more. It shouldn't be panic stations just yet.
We know that Pep Guardiola would gladly swap places with Arteta and Arsenal at this stage in the battle. Arsenal are still there to be knocked off. It's their title to lose. And from what we've seen from this young team over the past eight months is that they have the character, as a collective, to achieve the improbable. Those late, late winners proof enough of the resolve of this group.
Going to City they face two positive scenarios - take a point or win. City, on the other hand, know it's win or bust. As we say, the title is still in Arsenal's hands.
But before this clinker, the Gunners have Southampton tomorrow night. A banana skin if ever was one. Indeed, the week before the biggest league game since '89 and Anfield, Arsenal face the rock bottom Saints? C'mon, they'd laugh you out of the pitch meeting with such a script.
This should be a home banker. And we'll know more about this Arsenal team - and what they've learned - at the final whistle. But nothing from this past week suggests it's suddenly going to fall apart for the Premier League leaders.
