BIRMINGHAM — Arsene Wenger famously noted of his players that their confidence would “go up by the stairs… but down by the lift.” This particular iteration of Arsenal had a rather different experience at Villa Park. They were travelling by the rollercoaster instead. Give them a goal and the passes would fly from one boot to another in the blink of an eye, the aerial duels were so easy for William Saliba and Gabriel, Martin Odegaard ghosted past opponents and no one was getting a boot on Bukayo Saka, no matter how keen they were to bring him to the ground.
In flashes this was the Arsenal that had streaked to the top of the Premier League. But they could not grip onto this quicksilver version of themselves. As much as they were fighting to get past a largely ordinary Villa side who clicked only on the counter, the real battle was internal. Arsenal were resilient enough to keep the pressure up until the dying minutes, exploiting to the maximum the time that Emiliano Martinez had given them with timewasting that left referee Simon Hooper far from impressed. Arsenal were brittle enough to throw away so many opportunities to win before the ball bounced back into the net off Martinez’s head.
Cue jubilation. Suddenly the clouds broke and this team found themselves at the Premier League’s summit again. Asked what this result would do for Arsenal’s confidence, Arteta said: “I feel it’s right back with more belief than before because you have to turn performances into results. Against Brentford we did that but we couldn’t win it because of a decision – fine – against Manchester City we deserved more with the performance but the reality is that in football the games are decided in the boxes.”
As Arteta himself noted, though, winning games in this fashion is not sustainable. “You don’t have to produce as much as we do every single game to win games. Smaller margins should be enough to win games in this…
