EPL: Why Arsenal's Draw with Wolverhampton Should Be Considered a Loss

This shifted week in the English Premier League certainly exemplified the holiday spirit, it was truly a week of giving. Seeing a bizarre slue of ties throughout nearly every league game, many of which featured very lopsided match-ups, was absolutely shocking.  

With Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea all dropping two points to inferior quality teams, Arsenal were given a great opportunity to gain ground on all three of these sides. With their match being postponed due to a London Underground strike, as reported by arsenal.com, Arsenal prepared to face the 17th placed Wolves on Tuesday December 27, 2011.  

Arsenal struck very early with an 8th minute strike from Gervinho, who made a nice run onside and beat Wayne Hennessey who met Gervinho outside the six yard box. Steven Fletcher leveled the scoring in the 38th minute when a wicked deflection found its way onto his head and passed Wojciech Szczesny.  

The Wolves fought their way through halftime with the score even at one. Arsenal piled on the pressure hard at the start of the second half, but remained unable to find a winner. After a scrappy 90 minutes and six minutes of stoppage time, the scores finished level, despite Wolverhampton going down to 10 men in the 75th minute for a hard studs-up challenge from Nenad Milijas on Mikel Arteta.  

This result was certainly not what Arsenal fans would have been expecting or hoping for after watching three of the five teams fighting for top four spots drop points on boxing day. Arsenal failed to advance into the top four with these dropped points. Arsenal remains 12 points out of first, one point behind fourth place Chelsea and three points behind Tottenham (who play tonight and can create distance between both Chelsea and Arsenal with three points).  

Arsenal's loss will sit sour with Gunner fans as they digest this odd week of English football.

What this tie will mean to Arsenal come end of the season remains to be seen; however, this very winnable match proves to shed resolving light on some of the points from my prior article regarding Arsenal's eventual demise this season.  

Following the loss to Manchester City last week, Arsenal gave themselves no breathing room and continue to struggle to win points. Arsenal will have to battle and claw to keep among the top of the table for the remaining of this season, as these lost points may indeed yet prove to be very costly in determining the fate of Arsenal's season.