Why Arsenal’s Villa defeat will not define their season | OneFootball

From tired legs to missing leaders at the back, why one dramatic afternoon does not yet change the bigger picture for Arsenal.

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Emi Buendia’s last kick, gut punch of a winner at Villa Park brought to an end the longest unbeaten run in the Premier League so far this season.

I think it’s important to start with that so you know how I’m setting my stall out today.

Obviously, it should go without saying that to lose to the last kick of any game would be profoundly disappointing. To lose to the third placed team, to Unai Emery – a man who continues to inflict even more misery on us from the second city than he did whilst managing the Arsenal, is even more so.

And yet.

And yet, I found myself reasonably able, to borrow a phrase from Tony Soprano, “to put the grief behind me” fairly quickly after the game.

Don’t get it twisted, I still switched the game off almost as soon as the final whistle blew on Saturday afternoon, but I quickly came to the conclusion that this was just one those games you can sometimes end up on the wrong side of.

I don’t think anyone would have claimed a travesty of justice had we come away with the three points, a draw would probably have been fair, whilst Villa fans would probably – correctly – say they had the better chances with our defence looking uncharacteristically open either side of the centre backs.

As a friend I was out with on Saturday night said, it was a brilliant game and a fantastic advert for the Premier League, really.

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End-to-end, some tasty challenges and some quite strange officiating – not that I’m going to get into that as I don’t think it materially affected much.

I guess the thing for Arsenal is how unable we were to play the game on our usual terms. Despite Martin Odegaard completing his second 90 minutes in three days, the control that he brings to bear on the team and its performance was non existent in the face of a Villa Park maelstrom – well, aside from that excellent 15 minutes just after half time.

As an aside, it’s kinda sweet to see how much it still means to Unai Emery to beat the Arsenal (let’s be honest, he should be used to it by now).

Every shot of him on the touchline, he seemed to be prowling it like an addict in the early stages of withdrawal. It’s amusing to me that his behaviour appears to pass without comment and yet Mikel Arteta’s every touchline move is scrutinised as though he were a Basque Princess Di – albeit with better hair, obvs.

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Last time out, I expressed the view that I would have liked to see Declan Rice given a breather for the visit of Brentford. I think we paid a little bit for Rice not getting that midweek rest on Saturday, but he wasn’t the only one flagging in the last 15 minutes – and you could see the team gradually collapsing backwards.

I felt a bit for Piero Hincapie, I must say. I thought he’d had an excellent game right up until the point he ran the ball out of play rather than whacking it up the line to end the game.

I suppose, if we’re talking defensive lapses, it would be remiss not to mention Ebere Eze’s which let Matty Cash in to score the latest Villa goal of the season entry. I think we probably all knew it was coming when he got hooked at half time, it had very much not been his half – as Uncle Stevie would say, it felt a bit like he was playing in slippers.

It’s very hard to escape the conclusion that had William Saliba been available to us, we would likely have come away from Villa Park with one point at least. Of course, not only did we not have him, but we also lost Cristhian Mosquera against Brentford, which necessitated Jurrien Timber deputising at centre back and Benjamin White continuing on the right.

Standing in the west corner of the Clock End last Wednesday, I was thrilled to get an up close and personal view of White playing as though he’d never been away, standing up a gorgeous cross for Mikel Merino to head home.

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Hopefully, we’ll see a bit more of that in the future as – for all Timber’s obvious superiority as a defender, Benny Blanco does seem to offer a little more threat in forward areas.

If you’re still feeling down, a little gut punched perhaps, by Saturday’s dramatic denouement, just try and think back a few short weeks before Gabriel Maghalaes got injured and everyone was talking about how we were going to break every defensive record under the sun and walk the league.

Or you could just imagine being a Liverpool fan right now. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Real talk, I think the defensive record is probably off the table now – five goals shipped in our last 3 away games (naughty boys!), but the league title is still so very on.

Of course, it’s not nice that a seven-point lead has very quickly become two points, but look at the schedule we’ve had and the grounds we’ve ticked off along the way, whilst missing some real main character energy.

In two weeks time, we will also have removed Everton away from our schedule.

Such is our luck at the moment that we seem to be running into them just as they click into gear – and an 8pm kick off on the last Saturday before Christmas in the party city of Liverpool is sure to be an incredibly testing atmosphere.

However, before that we will have the our own 8pm kick off at home, against two-points Wolves and – imagine this! – the luxury of an entire week to prepare for that trip up north.