Arsenal Need to Take the Fight to Their Title Rivals, or Face Failing Again

The thing about any window of opportunity is that it will inevitably creak shut sooner or later, and momentary glimpses of hope are exactly that, momentary.

At 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho will each have been encouraged by a sliver of daylight creeping in, although it wasn't long before it was snuffed out.

Both craved a win—Mourinho to blow away the growing doubts that are collecting around his tenure like cobwebs and to make inroads into the gap between his side and the top four; Wenger to puncture the thickening sense of inferiority felt towards his bete noir built up over 12 years of winless head-to-head encounters. But if neither manager had wanted a draw here, then they certainly didn’t want the one that was served up.

United were not bad, but no better, and they dropped two points at the death, while Arsenal were, for long periods at Old Trafford, little better than awful.

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It was telling that in the buildup to the game, most commentators were moist not with anticipation but with nostalgia, the fires stoked by battles fought between these two rather than those still to be fought.

United against Arsenal as a matchup is primarily now a fixture with not much other than history in its corner, and that trend was fatally exposed on Saturday. This United side are not title contenders and are outsiders at best to return to the Champions League; Arsenal long since seem to have lost the appetite for engaging their title rivals in the kind of free-flowing attacking football that comes so easily against sides in the bottom half of the table.

It was a recipe for disappointment, and on Saturday lunchtime, disappointment came served in doleful spoonfuls of gristle and grey.

That frantic urgency that used to stalk this fixture is gone, but both sides—and this applies particularly to Arsenal—need to find a way to bring some immediacy back to a season that could easily be put out of its rhythm by a game like this.

In years gone by, Wenger’s sides have emerged from these high-octane romps gilded, if not always with a result. In 1998, when Marc Overmars outwitted John Curtis and stole a 1-0 win, it set Arsenal on their way to a six-week winning spree that carried them to the title.

The following season, a battling 1-1 draw in a freezing February mudbath was the catalyst for two points dropped from 11 games. Kanu glistened on his Premier League debut; Roy Keane and Patrick Vieira scratched lumps out of each other; Dwight Yorke put a penalty into the advertising boards; Nicolas Anelka and Andy Cole exchanged perfectly taken goals. It was a filthy night in Manchester, and it put bloodlust up both sides.

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Years later, post-Invincibles, the charge levelled at Arsenal was that the fight had gone out of the team. But just as the squad has been reset by a refreshed recruitment policy that values brawn on a par with the delicate touch, now there is a fresh crisis in the ranks.

For too long this team has failed to sparkle when the big matchups come around—the six-pointers that hand the title-race initiative on a gold plate and then snatch it away again all in the space of an afternoon.

It’s not that titles are won and lost in this way necessarily, rather there are certain criteria to be satisfied for success to be courted in any sport.

In the 2013/14 season, Arsenal spent more days on top of the Premier League table than any other side, thanks largely to a breakneck run of form in the autumn and early winter. But as the nights drew in and the fixtures piled up against title rivals, the team capitulated, and the season never recovered.

Arsenal were gutted psychologically by the thrashings they took between December and March. So while Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea sharpened their teeth for the run-in by tearing shreds out of the Gunners, Wenger’s team dissolved in the face of the challenge.

It was reminiscent of Manchester United’s 6-1 demolition of Arsenal in 2001, after which Sir Alex Ferguson argued that while the title race was still alive, it no longer included the ruined Gunners, despite the fact that they were by some distance United’s closest challengers.

It’s this stiffening of the sinews, fortifying the mind for the fight that’s to take place inside it that has been this team’s pitfall, but Saturday’s no-show at Old Trafford presented not so much an obstacle as a riddle. Arsenal looked not incapable but unwilling.

This wasn’t the brittle paramecium that shipped six at Stamford Bridge in Wenger’s 1000th game in 2014, or the team that folded like a broken penknife at Anfield six weeks previously. The days of 5-1 defeats are behind Arsenal now. But what is ahead?

After this, it is hard to make a favourable prediction. The team failed to perform against United, just as they did last season in the same fixture when a 3-2 defeat effectively ended their title challenge.

There was little movement here, on or off the ball. Passes were made and received in static positions, with the front four sitting in neat, predictable lines that United’s defence infiltrated with ease. There was no urgency in Arsenal’s attack, because Arsenal did not attack.

Wenger probably made mistakes. The partnership that brought the goal should have been introduced much earlier. Maybe then the threat of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain charging into the space vacated by the absent-minded and absent Daley Blind, crossing for Olivier Giroud to cause predictable chaos, might have brought his team something more valuable than just late salvation.

Two dropped points here may or may not prove decisive come the end of the season, but an opportunity was missed to get into Mourinho’s head—something others are managing with increasing frequency—and quietly sweep his team out of the title picture.

A win would also have done something for the Gunners' own piece of mind, with Anfield, Stamford Bridge, White Hart Lane and the Etihad Stadium still to be visited between now and May.

Arsenal need to decide how they intend to handle this season’s title race. But just as importantly, they need to convince their rivals that they can go toe to toe on those big Super Sunday afternoons when the world turns its gaze to the Premier League’s centrepiece occasions. If not, there are more capable sides than United who will welcome this team with open arms before stripping them bare.

The next test will be Manchester City at the Etihad on December 18, almost three years to the day since that miserable 6-3 thrashing in 2013. Arsenal could well be top of the Premier League by then, just like they were when the team then coached by Manuel Pellegrini ripped into them that winter.

They will need to show that they are willing to play against City, because Pep Guardiola's men will be prepared to play against them.

If they return to Manchester without a plan, then they may come away with another point, or they may come away with nothing. But what is certain is that another window of opportunity will have creaked shut on them.