Newcastle United rarely defeat Arsenal at the Emirates but I felt, in the hours before Saturday’s kick-off, this was a good time to play them.
In their previous six games across four competitions, they had lost the League Cup final to Manchester City, lost in the FA Cup sixth round to Southampton, lost consecutive Premier League matches to Bournemouth and Man City and drawn 0-0 in the second leg of the Champions League quarter-final against Sporting, having scraped a 1-0 win in Portugal.
Between March 22 and April 22, their hopes of a quadruple had been halved and a nine-point advantage in the Premier League, which they had led since October for more than 200 days, had been wiped out.
Even the most one-eyed TV pundits with affiliations to The Arsenal (a term employed unrelentingly and without irony by the deeply annoying shouty bloke on the PA at the Emirates) must have been wondering whether Mikel Arteta’s nearly men were going to experience another Groundhog Day season. To finish as Premier League runners-up for a fourth season on the trot would be quite some achievement.
Chokers? Bottlers? Specialists in failure? Being a traditionalist, I prefer to call them by their initial name, Woolwich Arsenal; or The Woolwich for short.
Whatever the label, they have won diddly-squat since the FA Cup in May 2020, five months after Mikel Arteta replaced the sacked Unai Emery.
They are a club whose fans expect to win trophies, lots of them. With good reason. When the silverware is in short supply, the natives quickly become restless.
My son and I spent the train journey from West Sussex to London chatting happily to a couple of their fans. We didn’t have much choice, the carriage was full of them. They were worried, not so much by the sight of a fat 66-year-old wearing the original bright blue Adidas top and shorts with gold trim and Brown Ale circular logo from the Entertainers era (though that would have alarmed any normal person) but more by the prospect of the most spectacular collapse since Fred Dibnah was in his prime.
Employing my Grand Inquisitor persona, I asked politely what had gone wrong. The Gooners had plenty of answers: a long and hard season was taking its toll; injuries to Saka, Timber, Odegaard and others had blunted their edge; Arteta was tactically too cautious; rival teams had sussed the set-piece routines, especially corners, that had formerly yielded big dividends.
So far, so good for a pair of eternally optimistic Toon Army volunteers. Arsenal were below their best, their supporters were palpably anxious, if not exactly quaking in their loafers. And kick-off was still nearly three hours away.
Then I reflected on Newcastle United’s recent results and availability. Through good fortune and the generosity of friends, I had been able to watch three consecutive matches for the first time since the 1970s. Sunderland, Palace, Bournemouth. Perhaps good fortune is the wrong term, though I still count my lucky stars I have attended so many games this season.
The Arsenal supporters were bemoaning their absent aces but we were without the pace of Gordon and Livramento, the poise of Schar and the power of the suspended Joelinton. I suspected Hall would also be absent, which was hardly a Sherlock Holmes-style piece of deduction. The left-back had been replaced at half-time against Bournemouth in a rare early substitution that suggested the change was motivated by fitness rather than tactics.
The old guard of Burn and Trippier had both seen some action in that game and I wouldn’t have been surprised or alarmed by their inclusion in the line-up at the Emirates. Arsenal have a lot of tall players, which is perhaps why Burn started but Trippier didn’t. Miley’s inclusion at right-back seemed a sensible choice, as did Pope for Ramsdale, whose reluctance to leave his line is in my opinion a big weakness.
As for the midfield and attack, only Ramsey made the cut. No start for Wissa, Woltemade or Elanga, three expensive summer signings.
Talking of the old guard, those visiting fans drinking in the stadium concourse about 40 minutes before kick-off let rip with a deafening burst of the Callum Wilson goal chant when his winner for West Ham was announced on the television screens. I suspect the celebrations were even louder in the Arsenal areas, because the late, late strike put Spurs back in the drop zone they had escaped for all of five minutes.
Sadly, our former centre-forward’s cool finish was just about the high point of another ultimately fruitless day at the footie.
United started brightly, especially Willock. He won two challenges in rapid succession, made an excellent 40-yard break through the heart of midfield and, under extreme pressure, played a well-timed pass to Osula. He ran on but, as he shaped to shoot 12 yards out, the ball brushed the edge of his right boot and he smashed fresh air with his left rather than testing Raya.
We were not sitting back. Neither were we lining up 4-3-3. It was 4-1-4-1 or perhaps 4-5-1, which meant Osula was often isolated.
Then Arsenal won a corner. They didn’t flood the six-yard box. We did. Their fans groaned when it was taken short and a stretching Willock managed to intercept a pass intended for the lurking Eze.
A minute or two later, the same scenario. This time, they worked the ball to Eze about 20 yards out, whose low drive flew a couple of yards wide of Pope’s left post. We had six outfield players in our six-yard box, Arsenal had one.
In the ninth minute they won a third corner. We all know what happened. The same thing that had happened twice already. Short corner, but this time to Havertz five yards inside the area. He took two touches and passed to Eze, who was free, 22 yards out.
Thank you very much and goodnight! This is a player who has scored more goals from outside the penalty area than anyone else in the Premier League in recent seasons.
Yes, you can call it a worldie; it certainly gave Nick Pope no chance. That is not the point, however. Or rather, it was all three points to a nervous, underperforming, edgy team who were well below their best.
Those two young Arsenal fans had told me on the train that the corner routines in which the opposing keeper and defenders were blocked or outjumped were no longer working. Arsenal tried something different and we didn’t twig.
They did it three times in five minutes and still nobody on or off the field, not one player or coach representing our club, seemed to realise that six defenders zonal marking one attacker inside our six-yard box was a massive waste of resources. That is a multiple brain-fade of epic proportions.
True to form, Arteta allowed the opposition to have plenty of the possession in non-threatening areas. Raya made one difficult save from a 30-yard Tonali swerver and one easier catch from a Burn header when our left-back outjumped his marker to reach a Barnes cross beyond the far post.
His team often had all 11 men behind the ball. They challenged us to score, rather than trying to extend their lead. A few quick breaks caused United some anxiety in the second half but Pope made only one proper save, from a low Odegaard drive.
Would a draw have been a fair result? Were we the better team? Two irrelevant questions when we concede one goal and score none.
The overall performance was better than in the three previous defeats. That is undeniable. Burn fully justified his recall, Thiaw did well and, until he ran out of steam, Willock troubled his former club.
Fans on the way home suggested Arsenal would have gone back on the attack if we had equalised. My feeling is they were vulnerable, especially after Havertz and Eze went off with injuries. A goal down at half-time, we should have thrown everything at them from the restart. We didn’t take enough risks and we didn’t take any until the final 20 minutes. By the end, the title pretenders were looking distinctly uncomfortable.
If they lose to Man City on goal difference (or better still, on goals scored) followers of free-flowing, adventurous play can rejoice, because Guardiola has finally released the handbrake. Justice will have been served.
Unfortunately, football and justice have a definitely dodgy relationship.