The lethargic stumble to fourth place is now being refined down to an art by Arsene Wenger and Arsenal.
Leicester City, an image of grit and substance these last few weeks, were immensely fortunate to snatch a draw against West Ham, having been a goal and man down with 20 seconds remaining in the match.
A lurching stumble was avoided, just, thanks to a very generous penalty, awarded by referee Jon Moss who, with this final decision, capped a performance one can only describe as completely batty.
But two points were still dropped, with five games remaining. Arsenal kicked off after the conclusion of Leicester’s breathless 2-2 draw, and, one presumes, would have been aware of the micro-chance they’d been offered to at least close the gap.
It was an opportunity they failed to take as Crystal Palace eked out a late equaliser of their own, with the match finishing 1-1. Arsenal dominated much of the contest, certainly in terms of possession, but were stunted, unimaginative and laboured in attack.
The general zest of a team still with hearts beating and spirits dancing was absent, a state of affairs, at this point in the season, that is harrowingly familiar.
Arsene Wenger suffers through a malady very much like this almost every season. A slow start to the campaign is followed by a confident momentum surge. A competitive challenge for the title is assembled, one that peters out early in the new year, and a meek, jaded slope to fourth-ish place results. Every season calls for his head are heard, and he endures them, slightly irritated, as they bounce off like spitballs shot at the weathered tweed-clad back of a tired professor, writing the same old lecture notes on the blackboard for the umpteenth semester in a row.
But the impact of this season’s version of events is particularly acute, particularly galling, given it’s Leicester City and Spurs who are ahead of them, not the customary moneyed juggernauts.
Can Wenger survive this new brand of suffering? It’s been two seasons since the go-to excuse of financial restrictions has been valid, what with Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez arriving at great cost.
With the impending arrival of Pep Guardiola and Antonio Conte, the underperformers of this term will surge again. It won’t be just Leicester and Spurs to compete with next season, and so it hardly helps that Wenger has been speaking publicly, in such uninspiring terms, about the prospect of Arsenal’s summer business.
“If you look at the top three teams, you will see they have not changed their team a lot,” he said. “We have to strengthen our squad but it’s not obvious to find the players despite the money the English clubs will have. We are already working but we have to find the players and that is not easy.”
Leicester’s 15-16 transfer business involved acquiring N’Golo Kante, Shinji Okazaki, Robert Huth, Demarai Gray and Christian Fuchs, slightly under half a team that have all played a prominent role in the Foxes’ sensational title tilt.
As worrying as all of this is, it’s just as concerning that Wenger’s proclamation that his team must be “perfect” in their season run-in – made before the 3-3 draw to West Ham on April 9 – appears to have wafted around his players, like a dozy blowfly, only to die peacefully on the windowsill.
To see a manager, with his season falling away like dry sand through his fingers, call his team to arms in this way, only for it to fall on deaf ears, is unconvincing in the extreme. The perfect run-in Wenger so audibly demanded was over 90 minutes after it began.
City will be a new, dangerous force under Guardiola, and the club will provide for him a mountain of money with which to rebuild. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to make similar predictions about Chelsea. West Ham and Southampton seem well-equipped to challenge for the top six next season, and Liverpool are already shaking off the Brendan Rodgers/Kenny Dalglish rust, with streaks clearly showing of the chrome, high-octane Jurgen Klopp machine hiding underneath.
Clubs are evolving into greater versions of themselves with ever-increasing rapidity, and the influx of new, egregious television money will only quicken the process.
“Honestly after the game today I am not in that kind of mood to dream about the championship, I am more in the kind of mood to repair the mental damage and prepare for the next game,” Wenger said after the Palace draw.
This mental damage, added to last weekend, has been periodically inflicted over the last ten seasons of title-less trauma. That the clubs dreaming of the 2015-16 championship are Leicester and Tottenham only rubs a cheese-grater over the barely healing wounds of every Arsenal fan.
Kai Havertz has scored twice against his former team and Ben White also got a brace as Arsenal brushed aside a dismal Chelsea side…
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has slammed the FA Cup scheduling after watching his side beat Chelsea 1-0 to reach the final, three days…
With a certain inevitability, Manchester City are suddenly in charge of the Premier League title race. Arsenal and Liverpool both produced lethargic performances under…
Ten goals flew in across the opening two quarterfinals of the Champions League as honours ended all square in Madrid and London. An incredible…
Match 7 2017. Ask any Arsenal fan what their memories were of that day and you'd get anything but a positive response. Leading 1-0…
Over to you, Liverpool. Arsenal and Manchester City have done their bit in the latest chapter of the English Premier League's tight title race,…
