Arsenal still have the title in their own hands, just about, but they’ve reached a worrying point where they can’t seem to hold onto anything – not their nerve, not a 2-0 lead. That’s what the true pressure of a Premier League race does, as the leaders just stopped playing. It means they’ve stopped winning, as Arsenal squandered a two-goal lead for another 2-2 for the second week in a row. This time, it was away to a West Ham United who had previously been in poor form, rather than Liverpool who had previously been in poor form.
It also involved a Bukayo Saka penalty miss that could have made it 3-1.
It leaves Arsenal just four points ahead of City with a game more played, but the great question is whether you can afford to do this in this manner against Pep Guardiola’s side. The story of the Abu Dhabi project has been transforming resources into the most relentless points-accumulating machine England has seen, now personified in Erling Haaland.
It increasingly feels like this season’s ending won’t see Arsenal win it. Dropping the 2-0 leads was bad enough but more concerning was the chaos the game descended into and how Arsenal still failed to make West Ham feel any way uncomfortable in that period. David Moyes’s side can now feel that bit more comfortable about their position in the table, but they might feel they should have won the game. They deserved to.
Arsenal never looked like the team they should be after about 10 minutes. It was genuinely as if the pressure was getting to them, the weight of it all causing them to make bad decisions, their programmed attacks short-circuiting. Martin Odegaard was going from guiding the ball into the bottom corner with elegance to playing passes to nobody. Saka meanwhile went from cutting surges to laboured runs that ended with weak shots. That’s before you even mention the penalty miss. It might well be said that is a moment Arsenal will look back on given that Jarrod Bowen equalised two minutes later but the reality was something had already changed. The play was only going one way.
As at Anfield last week, there was a distinctive moment when it all turned, and it was before West Ham had even scored. It was like everything just switched.
It was all the worse because, again, just like last week – we may as well copy and paste the words – Arsenal had been so supreme. They had the game won.
The opening 10 minutes were essentially one of those exacting starts that does exactly that while also offering an exhibition of why Arsenal would be fine champions. The two opening goals were of divine quality, in different ways.
If one response to that can be West Ham have been defending that badly of late, which is why this should never have been a contest, Arsenal were attacking that well.
They wondrously cut through Moyes’s defence with an incisive exchange of passes, until Ben White was left to drill it across the back for Jesus to force it in. The second was even better, this time involving sweeping balls across the length of the pitch rather than short swipes. Gabriel Martinelli first tried a wonderful swerving ball with the outside of his foot, only to see that sent back to him. He then tried a delivery with the inside of his foot that dipped and dripped in the most inviting manner for Odegaard to just guide it past Lukasz Fabianski with a controlled volley.
It seemed to sum up everything about Arsenal’s game, and a match that was completely in control. Until, very suddenly, it wasn’t. There was that moment it switched once more.
Arsenal will point to how debatable the West Ham penalty was but there’s a fair argument the game changed in the minute before that, and the moment that caused it. Aaron Ramsdale and his defence seemed unduly panicked by a West Ham surge, the ball pinballing around from errors until Gabriel lunged at Lucas Paqueta. The centre-half turned his legs in, but there’s enough for contact.
There was enough for a game. There was more to come.
Said Benrahma scored the penalty and West Ham were on it. What had become a procession only brought serious pressure for Arsenal.
Michael Antonio clearly fancied it against Rob Holding. Bowen was constantly running at Kieran Tierney. It could again be argued these were Arsenal’s absences catching up with them, especially in a defence that had been so coherent, but that made assurance behind all the more important.
And yet Ramsdale followed his superb feats at Anfield with one of his most erratic performances at Arsenal, flapping under a number of crosses. It led to a series of corners after half-time that only fostered the sense the equaliser was coming.
What made it all the worse was that Arsenal were then gifted a reprieve. In a rare moment at that stage of the game where they were actually attacking, Martinelli powered an effort forward and it hit Antonio’s hand. A penalty was given but the chance wasn’t taken. Saka put it well wide.
Far from calming Arsenal, the moment had only further emboldened West Ham. Within two minutes, they were level. It was like Arsenal were stunned, Bowen surging his way into the box to then fire an effort that almost went through Ramsdale.
The worst had happened. Arsenal now had to show they could be the best, by becoming champions, by digging deep. They didn’t do that here. They barely created a chance at all. There was nothing. That should be most worrying of all.
Arsenal need to seize this, but it does not help that they can’t seem to hold anything right now.
