Arsenal pre-bottle it in Peak Arsenal style and has Ange been playing 4D chess? It’s the 3pm Blackout
Arsenal, why do you have to be the way that you are? A weekend that had genuine chance of truly reigniting the title race saw Arsenal instead concede it in unmistakably Arsenal fashion, while elsewhere Bournemouth come a cropper and Spurs’ third straight win leaves us wondering if Ange has been playing us all this whole time and might in fact be a genius.
Arsenal 0-1 West Ham: Gunners invent ‘pre-bottling’ as Hammers make mischief at Emirates once again
We really should stop being surprised by these things. It is the history of the Arsenal. We, like everyone else, had giddily and foolishly thought the title race was alive once again.
Sure, we still thought Liverpool were favourites and enjoyed the doom-and-despair Liverpool mailboxes that greeted the catastrophe of a 2-2 draw at Aston Villa, but you could see why nervousness might have set in. Liverpool have absolutely looked less assured in recent weeks and started dropping points where points were not being dropped before.
And this was a weekend that absolutely had that ‘six-point swing’ vibe to it. Arsenal at home to West Ham on the back of a blank midweek, Liverpool going to Man City after a tough midweek game. The potential for the table to suddenly show Arsenal only five points behind with a game in hand was very, very clear.
We should have known better. We should have known what was about to happen. What did happen, though, is surely beyond even previous Peak Arsenal territory. The goal they conceded was very bad, West Ham breaking to turn a fumbled Arsenal attack into a Jarrod Bowen close-range header and a lot of Arsenal players including one conspicuous former Hammer looking awkwardly at their shoes.
But while this was still familiar Arsenal territory – ‘suffering serious title setback with home defeat to West Ham’ is literally one of last season’s key storylines – as was the discovery that perhaps Mikel Merino is not in fact a hidden striker gem who can save them £100m. But the sight of Myles Lewis-Skelly sent off via VAR barely 15 minutes after coming on might, if anything, be just too much Arsenal.
They haven’t bottled the title here, of course, but they have perhaps achieved something new and different; they’ve bottled the chance of getting right back into the title race when everything – right down to first-mover advantage and a kinder fixture – had appeared to be tilting their way. It is, if you will, a pre-bottling. Like a pre-assist and, we are very much aware, a term every bit as w*nky.
For the Hammers, meanwhile, a result that settles any faint lingering fears of total disaster and sees them once again insert themselves into the Big Boys’ troubles. We could be completely wrong here, but we get the distinct impression that West Ham are involved in this way far more than can be explained by mere coincidence.
Bournemouth 0-1 Wolves: Cunha and co take huge stride towards safety as Cherries CL hopes take a hit
There was a danger of four teams getting cut adrift at the bottom and the danger now is that it will instead be three. Wolves always looked like the one incongrous member of that quartet. The one that didn’t really belong. And not just because the other three were the three promoted clubs.
When considering whether Spurs or Man United actually could get themselves relegated it always seemed unlikely because no matter how bad they might be – and the answer has very often been very bad indeed – it just never looked like that bottom four could capitalise. Spurs and United are now on 33 and 30 points respectively and that is probably already enough. It just never looked like a total within the compass of either Ipswich or Leicester.
But it is and was always within Wolves’. They are now on 22 points and have a great chance to do what Everton have done before them and now ease fully clear of an increasingly despondent group. The key difference with Wolves compared to Leicester or Ipswich – Southampton are no longer even really relevant in the discussion – is that with Wolves you do look at them and see a team that could go on the kind of five-game run of 10 or 11 points that changes the whole picture. You never sense that the other two quite have that in the locker.
Matheus Cunha is obviously a big part of precisely why that’s the case, and the speed with which he allowed Wolves to turn numerical into scoreline advantage after Illia Zabarnyi’s red card always left Bournemouth facing a lengthy afternoon. It’s a result that makes a serious dent in Bournemouth’s hopes of Champions League qualification, which remains a truly incredible sentence to be able to say out loud even after this rare miserable afternoon for Andoni Iraola’s side.
Fulham 0-2 Crystal Palace: Is this the season Palace finally reach 50 points?
Seventeen points from 12 games.
That’s the target now for Palace to finally bring to an end one of the most curious runs in the Premier League. We’ve long since accepted nobody else is as interested in this as we are, but the fact Palace haven’t secured a single points tally outside the 40s since getting back into the top flight in 2013 is really quite extraordinary.
That they might finally do it in a season where they didn’t record a single win until the ninth time of asking is even better, and this fine win at Fulham was also the sixth of their eight wins this season to be secured away from home, which again is a nice quirk.
They’ve twice gone close in recent seasons, with 48 points in 2021/22 and that fast-finishing 49 last time out. Their current points-per-game would deliver just a tick over 48. Come on, Palace. We are all rooting for you.
There is also always the option of breaking the 40-something run by getting six points or fewer from those remaining 12 games, but nobody wants that.
Ipswich 1-4 Tottenham: Spurs avoid ignominy of relegation fight – has Ange been playing 4D chess all along?
Won’t come as a huge shock to anyone who’s watched previous Spurs wins this season to discover this didn’t really feel much like a 4-1 kind of game. Spurs were on the back foot for huge stretches of the first half before and after a pair of undeniably striking counter-attacks that ended with Son Heung-min teeing up Brennan Johnson goals.
Ipswich pulled one back and had an equaliser disallowed for offside by VAR before Spurs eased clear in the closing 20 minutes to rubberstamp their pure banter credentials.
Spurs’ four goals today see them once again elevated to the division’s second highest scorers behind only champions elect Liverpool, while their goal difference is back up to being the fourth best in a competition where they still languish pitifully in lower mid-table despite three wins in a row. Three wins in a row also gives them the Premier League’s longest currently active winning streak, because of course it does.
Avoiding a relegation fight is good for the basic dignity, but the significance of it could lie elsewhere. What Spurs have, in their own idiosyncratic Angeball way, is now cultivate the precise conditions under which they might actually win a trophy. They are not going down, they are not threatening the European places. They can now throw everything at a Europa League that, in the new-found absence of Champions League dropouts, looks distinctly winnable.
Ange Postecoglou, the crafty genius, has conjured a scenario in which even Daniel Levy would prioritise the Europa League over the pursuit of league-position prize money, given the Champions League prize on offer to the winners. Has this whole campaign been a 4D chess masterstroke from the Big Australian?
No. And they will lose to AZ Alkmaar, won’t they? But still.
Southampton 0-4 Brighton: Derby record still looms as Saints crushed at home again
Brighton at home looked a presentable chance for Southampton to ease their way past Derby’s infamous 11-point haul. That it ended in the now familiar sight of a thumping defeat for a side that has already lost 5-1, 5-0 and 5-0 at home in the last three months is sub-optimal.
And it does now mean the wait to keep Derby on their f*cking perch will extend into mid-March at least with the Saints’ only two league games before another circled date – Wolves at home – are trips to Stamford Bridge and Anfield.
Brighton, meanwhile, do still have the chance to turn their occasional loveliness into something truly tangible. Results elsewhere mean this win lifts them to eighth and suddenly within three points of the top six.