Last week at Liverpool, where Mikel Arteta’s Premier League leaders gave up a two goal lead, did not feel like this. That was Anfield. Anything can happen there.
But this was not Anfield. This was West Ham’s London Stadium and an opponent low on confidence playing in front of a meek support no longer believing in their team.
Yet the same thing happened. Two up and cruising became 2-2 and almost losing. West Ham hit the bar late on. There were bad goals conceded and a penalty missed, too. They are the things that can happen in the glare of the lights.
Now the title is Manchester City’s to lose. It may not look like that when the table is viewed but the two teams meet in Manchester in ten days and the problem for Arsenal is that their form is heading one way while City’s is heading the other.
Arsenal, then, will have to be better than this on that occasion. Really, they will. It is not just football that is tested at this time of year but also a state of mind and it is this that Arsenal are starting to discover.
This is not a collapse. Not yet. But this was a bad day simply because West Ham were a team waiting to beaten and should have been.
We can make as much of Bukayo Saka’s missed penalty in the 50th minute as we wish. The score was 2-1 to Arsenal at that point and had Saka scored it seems unfeasible his team would not have gone on to win the game. So it was a pivotal moment and the fact Saka’s penalty didn’t even require a save, missing the post by half a yard, will doubtless make him feel dreadful.
But this was not why Arsenal did not win. They didn’t win because they allowed West Ham back in to a game they contributed nothing to for the opening half an hour. West Ham’s first goal should have been only an inconvenience to Arsenal, so superior had they hitherto been. But Arsenal allowed that moment to change the game’s momentum and they never got it back.
Even after the West Ham equaliser, Arsenal had half an hour left and a considerable amount of artillery on the bench. Never were they back on top, however, and the final chance of the game fell to West Ham, a MIchail Antonio header hitting the top of the bar.
