What the mood around Arsenal is missing | OneFootball

City’s narrow win over Burnley hurt, but Arsenal’s display at the Etihad, and the likely return of key players, offer reason to keep believing, writes Paul Williams.

Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images

Manchester City’s 1-0 win against Burnley on Wednesday night means that for the first time this season and with just five games left to play, they are top of the table.

In football stadiums and pubs across the land, everyone is clearing their throats and tuning up our old favourite, “Second again, ole ole…”

This is going to hurt.

It’s been a bruising time in the Premier League for our beloved Arsenal.

Back to back defeats in the Premier League for the first time this season, with the latest one coming at Manchester City, means that the footballing manifestation of Harry Enfield’s Loadsamoney now have one hand on the Premier League trophy.

The important thing to remember here is, so do we.

Still.

I know, I know.

Events over the last week have been gutting and, if you’re angry about the Bournemouth game last weekend I’m not here to tell you not to be. It was the worst possible performance at the worst possible time and it was galling to see our players apparently sleepwalk through a game which, had we won, would have given us a safety net in Manchester.

I think there are a couple of factors which played into that performance which were out of our control, but I also realise they’re going to sound like rationalisations (fair, they are) and you probably don’t want to revisit it anyway.

So, let’s not. Especially as I think it’s fair to say, even in Sunday’s defeat there was much more cause for optimism than a week previously.

I would even go so far as to say that if the players can play at the level they produced in Manchester across the next five weekends, then there is every chance we will basking in golden South London sunshine come May 24.

Wouldn’t that be appropriate for the “Woolwich Nomads“?

I do realise, by the way, that at this point I am starting to sound like Monty Python’s Black Knight, but what’s the alternative really? We’ll have the whole summer to be angry if things don’t go our way – for the next five weeks I’m choosing positivity until it’s over and, as Declan Rice was seen saying on Sunday evening, “It’s not done”.

Anyway, if you’ve got this far and you’re still feeling angry about the last week and unconvinced by what I’ve had to say so far, then can I offer you the two Spurs fans I overheard in our work kitchen yesterday, genuinely having a conversation about how if they beat West Ham, they’d probably stay up.

The fact that this is even being discussed on April 21 is joyous to me – not quite as joyous as Xavi Simons was when he scored his, admittedly, very good goal, but close enough.

I don’t know what was funnier, the excessive celebration, or the look on his face at the full time whistle. The full Richarlison, you might say.

Anway, as I said to the two of them, much as I would love them to go down, I would much rather we won the league and I do feel we have a much better chance of being able to achieve this lofty ambition with Martin Odegaard and Ebere Eze operating in tandem.

Odegaard‘s pass and move style exponentially improves the way we can play through a midfield, whilst Eze can (and on Sunday so nearly did) provide the killer instinct in the final third.

It felt instructive, didn’t it?

As did having a centre forward in Kai Havertz up top who can link the play and make us feel like a functioning team again.

I know he should have done better with the chances he had and if we don’t get what we all want out of this season, then Kai’s header over the bar is a moment which is going to haunt us for weeks/months/years (delete as applicable), but I can’t ignore the difference he makes to how we play when he is leading the line.

For me, it’s night and day compared to his Swedish colleague, who, to borrow a line from my favourite band, seems to be very much “in the wrong place at the wrong time”.

Yessir, when times are bad reach for the appropriate Depeche Mode reference.

I completely understand that when we look back on this season, if it doesn’t go our way, everyone will focus on the home games with Bournemouth and United and, to a certain extent, the much reduced Liverpool as well as the dreadful giveaway of points at Wolverhampton.

If you want to call our failures to win those games one of bottle, then by all means have at it.

Again, I’m not here to argue with you, but I don’t think it’s intellectually honest to compare the performance against Bournemouth with the one against Manchester City without also acknowledging the difference in personnel.

The fact of the matter is that you can’t look like a team full of ballers if all your ballers are lying on a treatment table in North London.

Again, I totally understand that nobody really wants to hear it, but you don’t even have to take my word for it – you only have to look at what happens to Arsenal’s attack whenever the technical disasterclass that is MGM (yes, Martinelli, Gyokeres and Madueke) are on the pitch together.

We have ample evidence now that this particular combination of players doesn’t work and yet we’ve had to roll it out in a must win game against Bournemouth as well as a Champions League quarter final.

My hope now is that we won’t have to see this front three ever again.

There have been conflicting noises about Bukayo Saka‘s availability for the weekend – some are saying he’ll be back, some are saying out for the season [Editor – We hear he should be back in the next week]. If he doesn’t make it, for me Eze has to stay out on the left if only to provide some technical quality in forward areas.

After a seemingly endless cycle of weekend/midweek/weekend games, we now have to negotiate just two more midweek fixtures.

Next week we will be in Madrid for the first leg of the Champions League semi final with the return fixture a week later – congratulations to the boys for making two in a row!

The Madrid trip will see us done with leaving London for the rest of the season.

A short trip to the London Stadium to face West Ham and the aforementioned final day journey to Crystal Palace is as far from home as we’ll be travelling, 40 minutes on the Windrush Line.

Will it be 40 minutes to glory?