For Arsenal, it was all about whether they could recover from the low point of their season so far – the shock 1-0 loss at Everton from last Saturday. Nobody had seen it coming and Mikel Arteta was determined to show that it belonged to a different era, not this one, that has his team leading from the front in the title race.
Arsenal fell short. It was a game in which they craved victory, particularly before Wednesday’s meeting against Manchester City here. But Arsenal were not themselves, lacking their usual intensity and fluency in the final third.
