Arsenal hit Manchester United roadblock, but biggest obstacle is themselves

LONDON — It has been apparent for some time that the club best placed to stop Arsenal winning the Premier League is Arsenal. Here was the blueprint for how they would do it. The performance was bad, the decision-making was questionable, the tension was overwhelming. Throw that into the mix with some incredible finishing from Manchester United, and you have the sort of strange brew that can convince the league leaders that they cannot achieve what is so comfortably within their capabilities.

This was a team that, Sunday at least, seemed to have internalized that meme, the Arsenal-labelled figure holding an Arsenal-balled metal pipe, ready to slam it down on an Arsenal-labelled head. They had been plain-sailing before a clumsy pass by Martin Zubimendi handed Bryan Mbeumo an equaliser, but, you know what, that really wasn’t any reason for the headloss that follows. Teams give away sloppy goals all the time, most of them a lot more frequently than Arsenal.

All that was required from then on was to get back to the team they had been beforehand. They were controlling the game with and without the ball, manufacturing transition moments for themselves on the rare occasions United advanced the ball upfield and baiting Senne Lammens to hoof the ball straight back to them through their press. A flick by Patrick Dorgu when a cross went into the box muddied the statistical waters, but effectively Arsenal’s first goal came from a 26-pass sequence in which they pulled their opposition one way and another before applying the killer blow.

At their peak, Arsenal proved they had the quality of champions. That has never been in question. What doubts there have been are over their temperament and those were only vindicated when they let the leash off their inner saboteur. 

Arteta was not quite sure how to explain the clumsy run of misplaced passes that ended with United’s equalizer. He said of it, “The fact that you want to be more protective probably doesn’t help to make those mistakes because there were three or four, to be fair, that were very unusual today in the game, and they are part of football. 

“Sometimes you get punished and sometimes not, and today we got punished, and apart from that, we have to give credit to the opponent for what they’ve done and in the manner that they managed to win the game.”

Don’t take anything away from Manchester United, whose three goals were uniformly excellent, even the one provided for them by Zubimendi. They opened the door to a glass cage of emotions. It was Arsenal, though, that threw away the key.

One mistake after the opener begat another begat another. Dorgu’s thunderbolt was enough to momentarily discombobulate any team but there were still what proved to be 47 minutes left to play. You would not have known it by the way Arsenal went about their task.

Too much haste, too little control. Declan Rice can bend them in from almost anywhere, but with 25 minutes to go and Arsenal setting up court on the edge of the United box, a low probability swing like that just gave Lammens a chance to let the clock run and the nerves build. That was typical of the second half. If there was bait left out for the Gunners, they’d foul it. At a time when Michael Carrick was perfectly happy for his side to drop deep and defend, Arsenal somehow managed to rapidly increase the speed of their attacking sequences and cut the average number of passes. In the desperate late charge, such an approach is totally understandable, perhaps even optimal. With nearly half a game to go, though, the league leaders shouldn’t be in Hail Mary mode just because they’re a goal down.

Within minutes of United’s second, Arteta had made four substitutions that he would insist afterwards brought control to the game. It is fair to acknowledge that none of Zubimendi, Piero Hincapie, Martin Odegaard nor Gabriel Jesus were setting the occasion alight. However, the latter two in particular would have enabled Arsenal to play a better version of the possession-dominant approach that had them on top early on. Though Mikel Merino’s introduction proved valuable — his bundling home of a corner late on raised hopes of a mentality-affirming comeback — both the players and the message sent from a quadruple change seemed to heighten the sense of desperation in the air. Arteta’s geeing up of supporters only added to that.

One of Arteta’s great triumphs has been to change the energy of the Emirates Stadium, a ground that until recently seemed to believe it could will goals without any need for Arsenal players to get involved. Now this seems a crowd crushed by the unbearable weight of being on the cusp of greatness. Once Mbeumo equalized, almost every misplaced pass or move that wasn’t brought audible despair. The players are responsible for their performance, but it cannot be denied that it is a harder environment for them to excel when there are so many nerves being transmitted in their direction.

Whether it was more than that at halftime and at the final whistle might depend on where you sat. There were suggestions of a smattering of boos for a team that is still four points clear at the top of the Premier League. Though they weren’t audible in the West Stand, there were still visible incidents of fans berating each other amid the exodus that followed Matheus Cunha’s goal. In that moment, it was as if north London had travelled back to 2016 and the internecine wars of Arsene Wenger’s final days. 

“We have to understand that we all want to win,” said Arteta, “and the crowd is trying to be behind the team to make the best decisions and to win the game.” None of that is untrue. The frustrations and fears are valid. It doesn’t mean they are helpful. 

The counterpoint is that Arsenal have been here for years now. Their fans know what it feels like to fall short because it feels like that is what has been happening right the way through. It hasn’t really though, has it? Last season, injuries turned a title challenge from likelihood to impossibility by Christmas. No one wants to hear how the underlying data pointed to a team due a slowdown for most of 2022-23, but it did suggest that a young side would never be able to hold out against prime Manchester City. Only in 2023-24 did Arsenal really have a chance down the stretch. This is hardly the work of serial bottlers. Sometimes you go 16-1-1 and City still do enough.

No one seems to believe this to be true, though, and right now, facts really are being eclipsed by feelings. The critique offered by Patrick Vieira was not that this team lacked quality or depth but that they might not have the mental strength of champions, something he knows only too well as the captain of sides who both went unbeaten in 2003-04 and who had collapsed down the stretch a year earlier.

“We accept every opinion, where it comes and where it’s coming from, and they will have the right reason to say it,” said Arteta of Vieira. “At the end, we have to show the mental strength that we have on the pitch when it comes to a match day.

“We were absolutely brilliant in Milan, and today we weren’t that good. I don’t know if it was mental, because of how much they played, but because we were poor, especially technically in certain aspects of the game, against a team that when you make those mistakes, they can punish you big time. That was the difference.”

Arsenal were poor, United impressive but this was still a game decided by two wonder goals and one rare error from Zubimendi. The foundations are solid and though there is work to do on the attack — isn’t there always? — the opposition have to do quite remarkable things to get two or more goals against Arteta’s men.

Arsenal could do with remembering that. It’s how they got themselves a sizeable lead over rivals who don’t look like they can consistently eat into it. Arsenal may be the best placed club to stop Arsenal winning the Premier League, but they’re also the club who might only need to shut out the voices if they are to win the greatest prize.