It was one of those defeats that felt, as Arsene Wenger so memorably put it, like a “scar on your heart”. Depending on how the next few weeks go, Sunday’s 2-0 home loss against Aston Villa might be one that always pains those involved whenever it comes up. Or it might just be a twist in the bigger story. The only thing Arsenal can control right now is the speed at which they apply an antidote.
There is no doubt the defeat by Villa — their first Premier League loss of 2024 — cut deep. But by Monday morning, Arsenal’s players and staff were back at the training ground, cracking on. Today (Tuesday) is a travel day to Germany, Wednesday: the second leg of a Champions League quarter-final against Bayern Munich, Thursday: travel home, Friday: off up to Wolverhampton, Saturday: back in action in the Premier League at Molineux. There is far too much on the line in the next few days.
Prevail against Bayern and Wolverhampton Wanderers and they will be into the Champions League semi-finals and back on top of the Premier League with five games to go. Falter in both and they are out of Europe and potentially third in the table by Sunday night. That’s a hell of a tightrope to walk and Arsenal need all the physical reserves, mental concentration and emotional determination they can muster right now to make it across safely.
“You never know what the psychological consequences of a defeat will be on your team,” Wenger once said.
He experienced the two sides of that coin. The slumps you can’t easily get out of, but also the resilience and fightback that marked his successful teams.
Even the Invincibles, Arsenal’s last title-winning side, suffered body blows in cup competitions which could have derailed them. Within six turbulent days in April 2004, Arsenal were ambushed. Turfed out of the FA Cup semi-finals and the Champions League’s last eight, they found themselves losing again at half-time in their next league game, 2-1 down at home to Liverpool.
The atmosphere in the Highbury dressing room at that moment was so debilitating, the captain, Patrick Vieira, could not find the words to describe it. “Emotionally, it was one of the hardest ones,” was as much as he could summon, reflecting on it years later.
Somehow, thanks no doubt to the pervasive winning mentality most of those players had inside them, they roused themselves and fought back to win 4-2. As Gilberto Silva, a midfielder in that side, put it: “If you have a disappointment, you must shake yourself. You must move on and target something.”
Even Arsenal’s iconic Invincibles had to overcome moments when their season looked like being derailed (Mike Egerton – PA Images via Getty Images)
Today’s Arsenal must do likewise.
Understandably, rediscovering that confidence and that wonderful, unmeasurable quality of having the wind at your back is a challenge. It is human nature for the legs to feel that bit heavier and the head to feel a fraction more hesitant when positive momentum takes a hit. But they have to try to reconnect with the qualities that underpinned a sensational run during the early months of 2024 to get back into contention for the big prizes.
At the turn of the year, Arsenal pulled themselves together after a wretched run. A winter break in Dubai revived them. A sequence of wins made them the form team in the Premier League. Can they dig into that muscle memory, which made them almost impenetrable defensively and helped the goals to flow across the team in attack?
The past week has been troublesome. They have conceded twice in successive home matches six days apart and the nature of that instability, with looser defending and mistakes being punished, is a worry. Chance creation was notably down against Villa and even though they have scored freely across the squad this season, questions began to pop up again about the lack of an elite goal machine. It is unhelpful that two of the players they would expect to be a main source of goals, Gabriel Jesus and Gabriel Martinelli, don’t have the numbers they would like.
Just lately, with the games ramping up and the rest days thinning out, batteries seem to be running low. A few regulars are carrying niggles and several key outfield players look like they are feeling the slog. William Saliba, Gabriel Magalhaes, Ben White, Declan Rice, Bukayo Saka and Martin Odegaard can all be put into that category and all of them are essential to this team.
Oh, for another restorative trip to Dubai…
Instead, a “beautiful opportunity”, as Arteta calls it, awaits in Munich.
Perspective, perspective, perspective.
Villa was a bad game, but it has gone. Unfortunately, in a world containing Manchester City, where near-perfection is required for anyone else to keep up, one bad game can feel near-fatal.
It is a curse on the contemporary football landscape that the bar for Premier League triumph has been raised to a point where anything other than something close to perfection might not be good enough.
Decades of the English game passed with different teams creating their own dynasties and records and historic moments, but these mostly occurred as excellence dusted with imperfections and foibles. That was part of the magic. Overcoming the slips and rising from the stumbles.
Wenger’s Invincibles got to 90 points and they finished 11 clear of second-placed Chelsea, so it was not as if they were sweating to get to that mark. Notably, his other two title-winning sides did not need anything like that many. Arsenal finished on 78 points the first time Wenger hoisted the Premier League trophy, which seems a paltry total now. That 1997-98 team were astounded by what they managed in the run-in. They produced a streak of 10 wins in a row from March to May, which at the time was a rare and remarkable feat. City in recent years have made such sequences humdrum.
It is still incomprehensible that Liverpool, in 2018-19, could reach 97 points, lose only once in their 38 league games and not win the league. City under Pep Guardiola, pushed to unprecedented levels of near-perfection which are sustained despite the 115 charges against them for breaching financial rules, which they deny, have unquestionably changed the nature of title challenges.
Think about it too much and it could send you crazy. So, this is a time for Arteta, his staff and players, to not think about it.
Regroup quickly. Give themselves a fighting chance for something special. Dress the wound and get back out there.
(Top photo: Gareth Fuller/PA Images via Getty Images)
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