Three touches. Three impacts. Three distinct noises. The whip of a perfectly struck football off the meat of Jorginho’s boot. The symphonic clank of the Villa Park crossbar. The dull thud as it clattered off the skull of a blameless Emiliano Martínez. Perhaps this is what salvation sounds like. Those three noises were immediately engulfed by a fourth: the sound of the travelling Arsenal fans shrieking in disbelief, as if rescued from the depths of a despair they feared they might never escape.
Three points for Arsenal, then, and back to the top of the league they go, just as everyone expected. And yet nothing about this felt simple or preordained. Indeed, until Martínez’s own goal in the third minute of injury time it felt as if their race might well be run, right here in the Birmingham suburbs.
