Arsenal's 2022/23 Premier League campaign drew to a close at the weekend with a 5-0 thumping of Wolves at the Emirates Stadium.
Even with Manchester City losing away at Brentford on the final day, it still wasn't enough for the Gunners to be crowned champions of England for the first time in nearly two decades as despite leading the way for most of the season they ultimately came up short in the home stretch.
But where did it all go wrong for Mikel Arteta's side in the title race? Well, the view of Sky Sports' analyst and former Manchester United defender Gary Neville was that the pressure became too much for Arsenal to handle especially as one of the youngest teams on average across the entire division.
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"Arsenal have dropped 12 pts in 7 games! Won 9pts from a possible 21. All the characteristics of it being too much have appeared," he tweeted after the north London outfit were beaten 3-0 by Brighton & Hove Albion - a result that left Man City on the brink of retaining their title.
"Loss of form, giving up leads, energy and legs going, making unforced errors not seen earlier in the season, young players becoming tense and losing their freedom of expression and others showing too much emotion when calmness is needed.
"However in a high-performance environment and at the elite level we must still recognise when the pressure has taken its toll. That league table below was only 7 games and 5 weeks ago. I hope these Arsenal players are there again one day (if it’s not United) and can see it through."
What Neville was referring to was the Premier League table following Arsenal's 4-1 win over Leeds United on April 1 when they matched City's result against Liverpool to maintain an eight-point lead at the top, albeit having played a game more and with trips to Anfield and the Etihad Stadium on the horizon.
But whilst Arsenal did not help themselves with a poor run of form at the business end of the season and handed the title to Man City by losing against Nottingham Forest, in truth, the damage was done long before the trip to the City Ground and weeks before the aforementioned defeat at the hands of Brighton.
Now, rewind to when the Premier League season resumed after the March international break. The target for the Gunners to win the title was 26 points from the final 10 games, which in the dream scenario, worked out to be eight wins and two draws. Simply put, whilst they didn't need to be perfect, they could only afford to drop as many as four points.
However, within a fortnight after beating Leeds, Arsenal had lost their security blanket after being held to 2-2 draws against Liverpool and West Ham United away from home and to rub further salt into the wounds, they were 2-0 up in both games before being pegged back.
From that moment onwards, Arteta's side needed to either win their remaining games or hope for Man City to drop points. Sure, the latter happened - eventually - but by that time it was too late for the Gunners to capitalise as drawing 3-3 at home to Southampton and then losing 4-1 at the Etihad five days later can be pinpointed as the exact moment when things went wrong.
Who knows how the title race would have panned out had Arsenal beaten the Saints, but what is for certain is that in a title race with this Man City side, dropping points against the worst team in the division is hardly ideal and whilst it will go down as a draw it ultimately felt like a defeat when factoring in that it came immediately after the Liverpool and West Ham setbacks.
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