Arsenal and Arteta are bottling the Premier League title again after pathetic draw with Wolves | OneFootball

It’s happening again, guys. That was embarrassing from Arsenal and the Premier League title is now in the hands of Manchester City.

We were already quite concerned about the competitiveness of this game between the Premier League leaders and the side rock-bottom of the table before Rob Edwards admitted ahead of the clash that his players are a bit knackered after their FA Cup win over Grimsby Town on Sunday.

A sub-optimal worst Premier League team vs the best didn’t promise a huge amount in the way of intrigue, particularly as Mikel Arteta and Arsenal are so hell-bent on ensuring all football fans aside from their own have the worst possible time watching them play the game.

The Gunners fully met their boring remit as they sleepwalked towards a barely deserved victory before being dealt a hammer blow thanks to David Raya and 19-year-old Wolves debutant Tom Edozie.

The Wolves fans at Molineux passed the loyalty test with flying colours as they braved the sleet to watch their side, but near-silence fell after five minutes when Declan Rice swung an excellent, flat cross into the box for Bukayo Saka to glance in from his new No.10 role to earn his £300k for this week.

“We expected them to kick on after that,” Conor Coady said in the TNT Sports studio at half-time. Speak for yourself, mate. We expected Arsenal to look as though they’re probing but actually doing no probing whatsoever, playing easy pass after easy pass, ignoring the runs of Viktor Gyokeres or whichever other poor sap is making entirely pointless runs in behind opposition defences these days, while the one player with any real imagination has been jettisoned back to the bench.

There’s no place for invention and excitement in a team so well-drilled by their mechanical manager that they’ve either forgotten or no longer care that entertainment is a welcome by-product of victory.

“There’s no connection on the pitch. Whatever they’re doing they’re falling upon it if you know what I mean.” We know exactly what you mean, Merse. This is an Arsenal team that’s led the Premier League for the vast majority of this season without anyone being able to tell you what ‘an Arsenal goal’ looks like aside from one headed in from a set piece.

In fairness, a centre-back playing a through ball for another centre-back playing at left-back to score is also quite Arsenal, but Gabriel Magalhaes to Piero Hincapie is hardly Kevin De Bruyne crossing for a Manchester City winger at the back post or Mohamed Salah cutting inside to curl the ball into the top corner.

Saka did sweet f-all from No.10 after his goal, and ended up coming mostly from the right in any case, from where one might have expected most Arsenal attacks to emanate owing to the opportunity for frequent overloads in combination with Noni Madueke – whom we we were told this week Saka loves playing with.

No chances were created from the right flank by Arsenal and it fell to Hugo Bueno to show the more illustrious wingers on the pitch how to do it by curling a beautiful left-footed shot into the top corner to reduce the deficit, as Hincapie helped to cancel out his own fine dinked finish over Jose Sa by standing off and watching the Spaniard do his thing.

Adam Armstrong had fired a shot over the bar not long before and Arsenal ‘finishers’ Eberechi Eze, Gabriel Jesus and Leandro Trossard spent most of their 20-odd minutes on the pitch defending against a Wolves side proving that no amount of toothlessness in an opposition team can fail to spook the Gunners.

The regularity with which Arsenal gave the ball away was astonishing. They were genuinely just kicking it anywhere for the last ten minutes, as if they had their backs firmly pressed to the wall when in reality a few decent passes would have taken all the fight out of Wolves.

Having resembled a little boy on the touchline watching his panic-stricken players against Brentford, Arteta again looked so, so anxious here, and whether that unease is transferred to his players from him or vice versa, it’s endemic. For so much of the season they’ve looked as though they would stroll to the title, but they now look look as though they don’t have it in them, like they’re going to bottle it once again.

And that feeling came before the stoppage-time confirmation of Arsenal being entirely rattled in the title race.

David Raya has taken the pressure off in a similar manner at the end of innumerable games for Arsenal this season, but not now. He clattered into Gabriel, the ball fell for Edozie on debut and he smashed a fine equaliser in off Riccardo Calafiori, who failed to prevent the goal in his only action of the game after replacing substitute Trossard and just like that, the Premier League title is now in the hands of Manchester City.

And honestly, few would now bet against Pep Guardiola’s side. Because that was pathetic from an Arsenal side who got precisely what they deserved against a plucky but very, very poor Wolves team.

Unimaginative, boring, weak, apprehensive and paralysed by what could be but now looks unlikely. Manchester City are coming and without a massive improvement from Arteta and his team they’re going to trample all over and embarrass these sorry Gunners.