It takes quite something to start a game well and end up two goals down inside 15 minutes, so hats off to West Ham, who’ve now managed it twice in 12 days.
As against Newcastle, the home side had come out of the traps with intent, achieving the not straightforward task of dragging the London Stadium crowd onside (their default starting position of late has been neutral at best), only to concede from the opposition’s first two attacks.
Both Arsenal goals here, the first for Gabriel Jesus and the second for Martin Odegaard, were the product of glorious attacking play and non-existent back-post defending.
It had been five by full-time against the Magpies and the only question seemed to be how many here? But this time there was no meek surrender, no bashing of the self-destruct button - quite the opposite in fact.
From drifting towards another hammering, West Ham produced the best hour of their Premier League campaign to battle back for a deserved 2-2 draw, which might have been more had Michail Antonio’s header not struck the outside of the woodwork late on.
It is a result that does nothing for the Irons’ league position - they remain 15th, now four points clear of the drop - but everything for belief in their survival hopes.
For so much of this campaign, David Moyes’s side have seemed incapable of upsets, their wins coming exclusively against out-of-form opponents and fellow strugglers. They had taken only two points off the ‘Big Six’ all season before today.
But beyond the opening half-hour, this was the West Ham of old, a side revelling in the role of underdogs, nose-bloodiers and, in this instance, title challenge derailers. With Manchester United and Liverpool still to visit this ground, this ought to be the blueprint.
Perhaps playing with a little extra incentive against the club he is highly-fancied to join, Declan Rice was outstanding. He set the tone for the short-lived fast start with two tackles and an interception inside the opening 60 seconds, then eventually dragged his side back into the contest when plenty seemed ready to cry enough.
There was a moment around the half-hour mark, with Arsenal two goals up and the stadium probably only a third away from exodus, when two players in claret and blue went nominally to press Thomas Partey on the edge of the box.
Seeing their laboured approach, no belief in their eyes, Aaron Ramsdale simply rolled the ball to the Ghanaian anyway, putting a bit extra on his pass so the midfielder could swivel 180 degrees and stride between the pair unopposed into 30 yards of space. On the other side of it, Rice simply spread his arms in disbelief.
Minutes later though, when Partey received the ball on the half-turn again, Rice was on his back, seizing possession and starting the passage of play which led to the equaliser, as Gabriel dived in on Lucas Paqueta and Said Benrahma rolled home from the spot.
In that moment the game changed, and never again did Arsenal look like the slick-passing, controlling side that have suffocated teams away from home as often as at the Emirates this term.
A HUGE TURNAROUND! West Ham complete the comeback from 2-0 down to 2-2 🤯 pic.twitter.com/vHfeiD5HY5
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) April 16, 2023
A back-four minus Oleksandr Zinchenko and William Saliba, and instead including Kieran Tierney and Rob Holding, does not represent the same daunting obstacle and from the moment Antonio realised he had the beating of the deputy centre-back he, like his team, suddenly became the force of old in a bullying display.
There was still the Hammers’ fair tendency to let the air seep from their own balloon, evidenced on the stroke of half-time when rather than clip into the box of a rattled Arsenal, they nudged a free-kick short on halfway and invited David Coote to blow his whistle. After the break, a Gunners penalty might have had the same effect, but Bukayo Saka sent it soaring wide.
Within minutes, Jarrod Bowen - another who thrived under explicit instruction to make himself a nuisance - had controlled a difficult volley into the ground and past Ramsdale at his near-post.
Arsenal’s responses to adversity, both in-game and between them, have sustained their title challenge longer than most expected, but here West Ham did not give them space to breathe. Only once, when Tierney rolled across the face of goal and Jesus could not quite connect, did they come close to giving up the point they had so admirably fought back for.
