How Arsenal respond to adversity will define their Premier League title chances
Back in the days of bright August sunshine the contrast between unease at Liverpool and tranquillity at Arsenal could barely have been starker.
After overseeing a club-record 29 Premier League wins in a single season - “that’s not progress, that’s history,” in the words of Mikel Arteta – Arsenal were adding quality in the transfer market with a composure eluding a Liverpool team unable to get deals over the line as they prepared for an awkward transitional year under Arne Slot.
Eight weeks into the new season and their positions have switched.
Liverpool, glossy and quietly efficient, are gliding through their games while Arsenal keep finding new ways to “kick themselves in the foot,” as Declan Rice put it, mangling the expression in a fitting tribute to their error-strewn start.
Why Arsenal and Liverpool have traded places isn’t clear, but it’s tempting to draw a line between the notorious reputation of Arsenal supporters on social media - where angst-ridden whinging has reached new levels of hysteria this season - and the twitchy mistakes on the field.
Suggesting a causal relationship between anything that happens on X (formerly Twitter) and actual real life is almost always a mistake.
The ‘chronically online’ community – addicts whose numbers sadly include most journalists – repeatedly make the mistake of conflating the two things, so perhaps we should not give much credit to the theory that anxiety bleeds out from social media onto the field of play.
But maybe there is something to be said about the direction of flow going the other way. Arsenal’s fan base hasn’t always felt this manic, this conspiratorial about refereeing, this insistent on throwing tantrums when things don’t go their way.
It is of course a very small (albeit vocal) minority of Arsenal supporters to whom this applies but the amping up of the melodrama is definitely noticeable, and possibly revealing about the image their club projects in the Mikel Arteta era.
Nothing ever feels simple with Arsenal. They are fragile, tetchy. Forget the red cards, even the games they win tend to take a heavy psychological toll: going 1-0 down to Southampton, letting a 2-0 lead slip against Leicester before eventually winning out.
It’s as if the slightest hint of unfairness or adversity triggers a pang of panic in this team, which is then subconsciously absorbed by supporters and vomited back out as furious tirades against Howard Webb.
Liverpool were occasionally like this under Jurgen Klopp, and certainly more towards the end, but never quite to the same degree.
Why not? It’s a curious phenomenon with no obvious answer, although the ease with which Slot’s team can slow games down and see out comfortable wins perhaps reflects something subtle about the culture being created by their manager.
Or maybe it’s just that things happen to be going well for Slot at the moment. Nobody moans when they’re winning. The true test of a cultural difference, of Liverpool’s invulnerability, will be how they respond to misfortune.
Arsenal are at least getting better at that, inside the club if not outside.
“We made life very difficult for ourselves again, playing for 60-70 minutes with 10 men,” Arteta said after the Bournemouth defeat. “It’s the third time it’s happened in eight games, it’s just an accident waiting to happen.”
The admission it’s their own fault, something Rice echoed when he said Arsenal had “kicked ourselves in the foot three times in eight games”, is an important point of progress for a team that have sometimes implied the world is against them.
Jose Mourinho used to create this atmosphere to brilliant effect and there’s no doubt Arteta is deliberately channelling the “siege mentality” principle when he projects blame onto others.
But the sudden change of tone last weekend perhaps tells us he recognises this strategy has gone too far, has become too paranoid to be helpful, and is seeking the more courageous choice of fronting up and accepting fault.
The next step is to carry this attitude onto the pitch.
What was most notable about Arsenal’s performance at the Vitality Stadium wasn’t the red card itself but rather how they reacted to it. Title contenders need to play with the belief they can still dominate a game even when a man down.
How Arsenal respond to adversity will define their season.
It will probably define Sunday’s meeting with Liverpool too, given that the loss of William Saliba, Riccardo Calafiori, Bukayo Saka, and Martin Odegaard tempts another excuse.
If Arsenal give in to that feeling, if they don’t rise to the challenge, they will lose.
The path to winning the title is never smooth. Corny as it sounds, champions are made in moments like these.
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