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Some day, probably quite soon, Arsenal will win something again. Quite probably something much bigger than the Carabao Cup. But until then, there is only going to be anxiety, and it is going to get worse after Sunday’s second-half freeze against Manchester City in the Carabao Cup final, which City won 2-0. Wembley could have seen the start of the Arsenal era, perhaps even the first leg of an unprecedented Quadruple; instead it was City celebrating, and with a gusto that suggested the past couple of years of dearth have served as a useful reminder that these occasions can never be taken for granted.
Claims that victory in this final could be a huge psychological blow in the title race are perhaps a little fanciful. One game is one game. Professional athletes, robust self-belief integral to their existence, recover from defeats. But still, that flatness in the second half, the way Arsenal were pinned back and unable to break forward, has to be a concern. City were able to use the way Arsenal like to control the pace of the game against them, the short passes out from the goalkeeper used as a way of penning them in as they closed down passing lanes, allowing their defenders to have the ball and denying them options. What was that? A tactical triumph for Pep Guardiola? Exhaustion from Arsenal? Or the familiar mental fragility returning?
Arsenal have not been good for a while now. They may have gone 14 games unbeaten since their home defeat to Manchester United, but it would be an extremely optimistic reading to suggest that is evidence of them cruising to the title. Their lead over City is nine points. But City have a game in hand. If they win that, and then beat Arsenal at the Etihad on 19 April, the gap is down to three, and that means Arsenal’s other six league games: home to Bournemouth, home to Newcastle, home to Fulham, away to West Ham, home to Burnley, away to Crystal Palace, would all come with a dire sense of jeopardy.
They may have been getting results, but Arsenal have not been playing well. The win over Chelsea was the result of goalkeeping errors. The win over Brighton was bad-tempered and ground out. The win over Mansfield was closer than it should have been. They only drew away to Bayer Leverkusen. Everton held them until a goalkeeping error in the 89th minute. Only in the home leg against Leverkusen did they look convincing. It’s all been scratchy and edgy, merit derived less from the performance than the fact they have got the job done.
But will they keep getting the job done? Finishing second in the league three seasons in a row leaves its mark. What if this side, what if Mikel Arteta, somehow lack an indefinable capacity to get the job done? The memories that will hurt most are those two games in April 2023 when they led 2-0 at Liverpool and West Ham, were playing superbly, seemed on course for comfortable, perhaps definitive victories, and then collapsed, drawing both. Confidence suddenly shot, they then scrambled a 3-3 draw against Southampton at home. Six points had been frittered, and so they went to the Etihad leading the table by five points having played two games more than City; the momentum of the title race had shifted, and City hammered home their advantage with a 4-1 win. City went on to win the title by five points.
Those scars are hard to erase. The following season, they got 89 points, a remarkable tally, but two fewer than City. That campaign, they went to the Etihad at the end of March, level with Liverpool and a point clear of City. They played well. They dominated. They looked the likelier side to win. And then, with 20 minutes remaining, they shut up shop and accepted a 0-0 draw. They maintained their lead in the table with nine games to go, but they could have opened up clear water. They lost one game during the run in, to Aston Villa, City won nine in a row, and a second title chance in two years was gone. Arteta had blinked. Perhaps there were solid data-led reasons for doing so, but given the chance to gamble and finish City off, he hesitated.
That will play on minds at Arsenal. Perhaps it was already in the second half on Sunday. Arsenal had been the better side before the break, but they ground to a halt. There probably wasn’t one cause. Tired bodies lead to poor decisions – and the general fatigue of Premier League sides was clear in the last 16 of the Champions League, just as Paris Saint-Germain and the best Spanish sides seem to be hitting their peak. City did press well, did stifle Arsenal in the way they used to stifle the best opponents. But the biggest fear for Arsenal will be that they were undone by anxiety, tightening up as the line came into view. They have the international break to put that right – or, perhaps, to dwell upon it.
On this day …
When the suffragette Nettie Honeyball founded the British Ladies Football Club in 1894, she did so with a specific motive “of proving to the world that women are not the ornamental and useless creatures men have pictured … I look forward to the time when ladies may sit in Parliament and have a voice in the direction of affairs.”
The first game under the auspices of the club was played on 23 March 1895 at Crouch End Athletic Ground, where North London beat South London 7-1. The quality was, by general consent, not high, with the “Lady Correspondent” of the Manchester Guardian writing: “I do not think that ladies football matches will attract crowds, but there seems no reason why the game should not be annexed by women for their own use.” By Boxing Day 1920, after a surge in interest among works teams during the first world war, a women’s game played at Everton’s Goodison Park between Dick, Kerr Ladies and St Helen’s Ladies drew a crowd of 53,000. What had begun as a minor exhibition 25 years earlier had become a major event – major enough to alarm the Football Association which, expressing concern about whether the game was as amateur as it seemed, prohibited women’s football from its grounds for half a century.
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This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email [email protected], and he’ll answer the best in a future edition.
