Arsenal so bad that late, late victory over Wolves doesn’t even have Hallmark of Champions | OneFootball

The Premier League table has looked weird pretty much all season.

The scale and closeness of the mid-table morass has led to all sorts of teams popping up incongruously near the top of the league. We’re not having a go, but Everton were fifth for a bit the other week. How did that happen?

At various points Liverpool, Manchester City, Aston Villa and Chelsea have looked or do look like title contenders despite that being really quite hard to square with what your eyes often tell you about them. Especially Chelsea, but especially Liverpool.

But there was at least two parts of the table that made perfect sense. Two places where you could just nod and go ‘Yes, that’s right.’ Until now.

Arsenal have looked exactly like the sort of team that might have a five-point lead at the top of the table, and Wolves have looked every bit bad enough to give Derby’s record a red-hot crack.

So how do we square any of that with an absurd game at the Emirates in which Arsenal were immensely fortunate to come away from an unsettlingly nervous performance with all three points to show for it after a second own goal put them back in front deep, deep, deep into injury time?

This against a Wolves team whose only previous point away from home this season came at Spurs, who are currently for reasons known only to themselves engaged in a year-long quest to turn terrible home form into some kind of performance art piece.

Arsenal were absolutely rotten here in a way it’s just deeply hard to fathom. We’ve tied our own head in knots trying to work out whether managing in the end to get away with it makes them more likely to win the league due to the potency of the Hallmark of Champions effect, or less likely because they really might have spooked themselves silly at just how bad they were here.

Was the fact they were able to rouse themselves from the disappointment of conceding a 90th-minute equaliser to the worst team in the country and find a late winner more of a positive reinforcement than the sheer extent to which they sh*t themselves when offering Wolves – Wolves, for goodness’ sake! – so much encouragement by sitting back and pretty much inviting them to score the equaliser in the first place.

Our initial gut feel is that just how poor Arsenal were between their opening goal and the equaliser might end up being the most telling part of the day. The opening goal when it arrived should have provided a sense of enormous relief. Instead it instigated a 20-minute period that betrayed the nerves that have crept in to Arsenal’s title charge when there really is no need.

It’s felt to us up to now that Arsenal have been a touch unlucky not to be further clear. They’ve been reeled in a bit over recent weeks without really doing too much wrong. But paying heavy prices for those things they have got wrong.

In isolation, draws at Sunderland and Chelsea and a narrow late defeat at Aston Villa are not terrible results; but having them in three successive away games exacerbates their impact.

That impact has now, for the first time, bled into Arsenal’s home performances and today’s eventual result can’t entirely wipe away the sense of unease that instils.

The only home game across all competitions Arsenal have failed to win remains September’s 1-1 draw with Man City in which Pep Guardiola went Full Mourinho to get it done.

They have obliterated teams across pretty much all ability ranges, from Bayern Munich and Atletico Madrid to Nottingham Forest and Leeds via Tottenham.

Crystal Palace were, before today, the only beaten team even to keep the margin of defeat to a single goal – and they will return this week for a League Cup quarter-final feeling a good deal more confident now than they were a few hours ago.

Sure, Arsenal dominated in all the ways you would expect in terms of possession and territory and set-pieces, but they just created so very little across the entire game against the worst defence in the country.

Arsenal managed only two shots on target in the entire game. Wolves, who were also pitting the division’s worst attack against its best defence, had the same number.

One was their equaliser, the other the only real clear chance of the entire first half just before the half-hour, when Hwang Hee-chan was able to break totally clear from inside his own half with all 10 outfield Arsenal players apparently forgetting this only resembled an attack v defence training exercise rather than actually being one.

Wolves deserve huge credit for the way their 3-5-2 nullified Arsenal. It was a heroic effort across the entire game and one undone only by a couple of moments of extreme misfortune.

But it should have been beyond their ken. There should have been nothing Wolves were capable of doing that could make this difficult for Arsenal, never mind get within a few minutes of a significant shift in the title race sands.

Because the starkest truth, and one that should also concern Arsenal, is that even if Wolves had emerged with a point it would barely have shifted the needle for their own hopes and dreams. They’d have enjoyed it, sure, but they’d still be doomed.

Wolves are so far gone that giving the champions-elect such a terrible fright doesn’t really leave you with the usual ‘If they can play like that every week…’ thought process.

Which leads us back again to whether this was a win that actually has any Hallmark of Champions benefit for Arsenal. We’re really not sure it does. They looked scared and tired here, against what may very well end up being officially the worst Premier League side ever.

Wolves may not be in a position where they can take much encouragement from this game. But Man City are. Aston Villa are. And they will have seen what we saw here: vulnerability and uncertainty.

Arsenal have simultaneously managed to move five points clear at the top yet make the title race appear more alive than ever.