And then there were two. As the clock ticked down at St Mary’s Stadium on Saturday night even the stray yellow balloons on the pitch had begun to take on a weirdly mocking quality.
The balloons were almost too much, like metaphors-for-hire in an arthouse film, popping up in shot every time Arsenal tried to transform another spell of mechanical pressure into creative, incisive football. Your dreams? Your dreams are just air inside a polymer shell. Your dreams are a squeaky veneer. Even when you try to take agency over your dreams, or at least stamp on them before a set piece, they will scoot away and bobble about annoyingly near the corner flag.
