Arteta knows title is ‘dead’; his Arsenal changes – and one Liverpool sub – proved it
Mikel Arteta said Arsenal would concede the Premier League title to Liverpool ‘over my dead body’. Then his first sub in a must-win game was Kieran Tierney.
Mikel Arteta said Arsenal would abandon their Premier League title charge “over my dead body” after a weekend which swung the pendulum in the irrevocable and irresistible direction of Liverpool. If there was still a pulse, it faded into insignificance the following day.
The declaration after one final check came between 8.26 and 8.32 on Wednesday evening. Within those six minutes, even Liverpool supporters nursing a glass half-empty and Arsenal fans preparing to throw a glass half-full in the air will have been drinking it in or drowning their sorrows, depending on allegiances.
It remains a title race only in abstract theory but at least the phrasing is apt. Dominik Szoboszlai, the tireless marathon sprinter, has recently ploughed his unending energy into the art of goalscoring and he seems like a natural. He will cross the finish line first and keep running into next season at this rate as James Milner’s lactate test heir.
His finish after about ten minutes against Newcastle was remarkably similar to his goal against Manchester City, as was Liverpool’s general control of an obviously talented opponent. The Magpies were game; they just came up against the wrong team.
And then came the moment. Six minutes after Liverpool scored, it was Arsenal’s first opportunity to respond following a goalless and largely lifeless first half more than two hours away at the City Ground. Arteta played his hand but it was difficult not to see Kieran Tierney replacing Riccardo Calafiori as one massive bluff.
The Italian had even been Arsenal’s biggest threat by that point, striking the post after a wonderful turn duped Nicolas Dominguez. Calafiori’s hybrid role as full-back inverting to centre-forward in possession was Arteta’s latest reinvention of a wheel which has long since fallen off.
An early booking forced Calafiori off by half-time and that substitution underlined the stark difference between these two sides, or more pertinently squads. Every subsequent Arsenal change was an existential cry for help: Zinchenko for Jorginho; Sterling for Nwaneri; Partey and White for Odegaard and Timber.
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An understandably worried Nottingham Forest staged a 90-minute intervention helmed by Murillo and Nikola Milenkovic, who might have struggled to establish the precise identity of the specific centre-forward they were supposed to monitor and subdue but their solution – to simply turn away anyone who came within an inch of their box – was sound.
This was a team effort, as it tends to be with Nuno Espirito Santo’s side. The full-backs were exemplary, the midfielders impeccable and the forwards minacious. The hosts did not welcome being relegated to a subplot and they might well have won it themselves late on through Chris Wood.
Newcastle likely didn’t enjoy their bit part in the story either but this version of Liverpool cares not. After their great wobble of away draws against a Champions League side and ludicrously motivated bitter rival littered between various wins, the Reds have now handled the sides fourth and sixth in the Premier League table with consecutive arms-length 2-0 strolls.
The Szoboszlai goal was stunning in its simplicity, four passes between the two boxes to turn defence into attack before a delightful swept finish. That lead went entirely unthreatened, even with Callum Wilson’s vaguely passable impression of the injured Alexander Isak, until Alexis Mac Allister’s sublime strike 20 minutes into the second half.
The Mo Salah assist was as inevitable as it was wonderful, manipulating space and time to wait and find one teammate in a sea of five Newcastle shirts surrounding him. The rest of the game was basically an exercise in trying to get Salah to score but the tumbling records can wait.
And once Wataru Endo was sent on in the 77th minute, that was that. Arne Slot’s – or in this bizarre case for a football fan who grew up in the mid-2000s, Johnny Heitinga’s – final whistle retained his scoreline-preserving brilliance thereafter. Two goals have been scored in his 130 minutes on the pitch across 13 Premier League appearances this season: one to make it 5-0 against West Ham in December and an Ipswich consolation in a 4-1 victory in January.
Arsenal have a squad full of players who similarly lock in the result as soon as they enter the pitch. The slight problem is that Arteta sends them on to be game-changers.
Tierney was the only one of those five substitutes to create a single chance. Arsenal’s solitary shot on target came from their seventh of 11 corners. This was a miserable distillation of their problems in an attritional hour and a half: that overreliance on set-pieces, the refusal to sign a striker, the damaging loyalty to certain players and conscious decision to work with so few.
Beyond those trademark infuriating dinks into a congested area from the inside right or left positions, they had absolutely nothing.
Newcastle and Nottingham Forest played out a ridiculous seven-goal thriller on Sunday which magnified their respective attacking strengths but also painstakingly highlighted their defensive deficiencies. Three days later, they faced the sides in first and second and helped show just how substantial the gap between the two really is.
Arsenal’s Premier League title hopes were already dead. This was just the inauspicious start to an agonising post-mortem.
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