Arsènal

The original cover of Arsenal’s 2007/08 Handbook featured a photograph of three players standing proudly together, arms crossed. Gilberto was in the middle, slightly in front of William Gallas and Kolo Toure. All three were displaying the captain’s armband. By the time the publication went to press, the photo had been swapped for one of the giant club crests that adorn the exterior of the Emirates Stadium. The arms crossed picture had been taken at a time when the somewhat fanciful notion of sharing the captaincy was doing the rounds. Wenger evidently felt was that there was no obvious choice to replace the departed Thierry Henry, although Gilberto had been his deputy the previous season. All three had a justifiable claim to being the chosen one.

The captaincy had become a thorny issue ever since the departure of Patrick Vieira. Wenger had been fortunate to inherit Tony Adams, and by the time of Adams’s retirement, Vieira had worn the armband on enough occasions to make the transition seamless. In the summer of 2005, when Wenger decided it was time for Vieira to move on, Thierry Henry had two years remaining on his contract. With no obvious alternative, it was a difficult for the manager not to make his star striker the skipper. To have overlooked him would have been deemed a snub to a sensitive soul that could have strained relations.

Meriting pride of place, Henry undeniably contributed some inspired performances in the Champions League campaign that culminated in a return to his Parisian roots in May 2006. However, in a below-par performance in that final he missed gilt-edged chances to score, perhaps a consequence of the added responsibility weighing him down. Did his position as captain influence his choice to stay with the club at a critical period in its history? Whether his decision was an act of selflessness or not (albeit one with enormous financial rewards when his £100,000 plus weekly wage was combined with the upfront payment of his entire loyalty bonus), it cut little ice once the manager decided that the chief benefit of the contract renewal was the fact that he would not be forced to dispose of the player for less than his market value.

How would the club cope without Thierry Henry after his move to Barcelona in 2007? Of more immediate concern, who should succeed him as captain? Arsène Wenger had elevated Arsenal to the top level in world football – huge stadium, sell-out crowds, phenomenal income – and yet he did not have an obvious leader in the ranks. The three-way experiment was never put to the test as Gilberto was absent leading Brazil in the Copa America in June and July, and as a consequence missed out on the pre-season preparation enjoyed by colleagues. In the warm-up matches Gallas and Toure each took turns with the armband, although when tournaments – the inaugural Emirates Cup at home and in Amsterdam at Ajax’s ArenA stadium – were won, Gallas collected the trophies. Three days before the first Premier League fixture against Fulham, Wenger announced that Gallas had got the nod ahead of the other contenders, explaining, “Centre back is always the best position to lead on the pitch and it is Gallas who has more experience at the back.” An interesting thought process, but one he discounted two years earlier when Sol Campbell could have filled the role given to a centre forward.

The decision to select Gallas raised a few eyebrows, as the player had been with the club for less than a year. However, there was no question that he detested losing and his CV included a World Cup Final and two Premier League titles, although the manner of his exit from Chelsea hinted that accusations of a quixotic nature might be justified. Additionally he had already earned a reputation for being outspoken, bypassing the censorious mechanism of the Arsenal press office by giving interviews in his native tongue to the French press. No diplomat he. A view amongst some fans was that he was such a moaner that he must have been given the captaincy to encourage him to choose his words more carefully.

Gilberto’s Copa America duties had ended with a yellow card in the semi-final in early July but Arsène Wenger wasn’t about to rush him back into the fray. The Brazil captain was given three and a half weeks off, during which time he learnt he had been overlooked. The manager explained his absence: “It will take two or three weeks to get him ready. If we don’t do that he will suffer during rest of the season.” He suffered anyway, as the impressive form of his stand-in Mathieu Flamini ensured he never regained a regular starting spot.

Despite the apparent upheaval, the team enjoyed the kind of dream start – eight wins and a solitary draw from the first nine games – that no one had seen coming, except possibly Arsène Wenger. He told a friend, “I am confident that we can challenge; the question is whether the youngsters can last a season.” With Henry no longer around and a perceived lack of improvement in the squad, a top-four place – according to the pre-season previews in the media – was seriously in doubt. During the summer, Wenger had recruited right back Bacary Sagna from Auxerre, striker Eduardo from Croatia Zagreb and midfielder Lassana Diarra from Chelsea. Only Sagna started matches as a matter of course, and immediately looked like an inspired purchase, improving the team both defensively and going forward and suffering none of the usual inhibitions in adapting to a new environment.

It would be a bit melodramatic to say that the pattern of the entire season was set during the very first game, but that is how some supporters saw it. Behind at home to Fulham, and finding it difficult to break through the massed ranks of their opponents, two very late goals turned a potentially humiliating defeat into a springboard for the weeks ahead, even if there were some early hiccups, such as individual errors by Jens Lehmann that resulted in Manuel Almunia replacing him as the first-choice goalkeeper. The team were now scoring many more goals from midfield than hitherto; their possession was more incisive, less prone to over-elaboration. The consistent selection of the mobile Emmanuel Adebayor added variety to the build-up, and with his height and that of substitute Nicklas Bendtner they became more effective at set pieces, particularly when the ball was crossed into the area. It was an aspect of their approach where Wenger’s Arsenal had often come up short, epitomised by the relatively low number of headed goals notched by the recently departed club record scorer. It had seemed at times as if the emphasis on possession meant that the team were under orders to forego the aerial option, and the quality of free kicks and corners resulted in poor returns compared to other leading teams.

There was improvement in other respects too. The team became less prone to succumbing to the rumbustious style of opponents like Bolton which in recent seasons they had found difficult to combat. Firstly, the zip of the passing and movement was working so well that more often than not opponents weren’t able to get close enough to disrupt the fluidity of the play with crude challenges. Secondly, the resilience of the side took a turn for the better with the presence of Mathieu Flamini alongside Cesc Fàbregas. With his sleeves rolled up and his combative approach he reminded older fans of Peter Storey from the 1970/71 double team. Much more of a battler than Gilberto, when the going got rough he could give as good as Arsenal got. Now into the final year of his contract, Wenger had actually given Flamini the option of leaving during the summer due to an anticipated lack of first-team opportunities, but the player elected to stay and fight for his place and both parties were glad that he did. Not that Cesc Fabregas was a shrinking violet. Still only 20, he began to show a steely side to his instinctive imagination and passing skill. Further, his finishing became far more incisive, so that his efforts were rewarded far more frequently than his meagre return of four goals the season before.

With Flamini and Fabregas prepared to battle in midfield, the team actually comprised a more robust spine from defence to attack, and it was on this basis that the logic of making William Gallas the captain made some kind of sense. He may have missed his on-field arguments with Jens Lehmann, but at least with the more amenable Almunia in goal, he could concentrate his aggression on the opposition. And in attack, Robin van Persie did not lack the ability to get beneath the skin of opponents, with a streak of aggression he shared with his illustrious predecessor Dennis Bergkamp, an attribute not uncommon in mercurial Dutch forwards.

Progress in the Champions League was equally positive, with the qualifying round against Sparta Prague handled comfortably. A kind group stage draw then matched Arsenal with Sevilla, Steaua Bucharest and Sparta’s neighbours Slavia. They started like a train with nine points from the first three matches, including a 7–0 demolition of Slavia. However, as good as qualified, in the concluding three fixtures Wenger then fielded weaker selections with the result that they ended the group in second place, inviting a tougher draw in the last 16 and foregoing results bonuses of €900,000 (approximately £700,000 given the exchange rate at the time) through dropped points.

But there is always a cloud somewhere on the horizon, and early on it took the form of uncertainty over Arsène Wenger’s future. His contract only lasted until the end of the season and, as usual, he seemed in no rush to sign a new one. And if he went he could be followed by an exodus of the talent he had developed. It was not as if the board had any kind of succession plan in place. How would Arsenal compete then? With money? Not for a while yet. Stability was desperately needed. “We’re talking and usually when we talk, there’s always a positive outcome,” Wenger said when pressed on the matter at the start of the season. “What I think when I’m negotiating the deal is whether I have the freedom to work the way I want to,” he added. “I always had that with David Dein and, since David has gone, I still have it. That is, for me, the most important thing.” In truth, Wenger had already made up his mind. As long ago as April, he and Annie had settled on their daughter Léa’s secondary school. It was only David Dein’s exit that rocked the boat but with the aid of his friend’s encouragement the turbulence soon passed.

And so the Frenchman, only a month into the campaign, signed on for a further three years’ tour of foreign duty. “Since the beginning of the season something has been happening in this team,” he enthused when the news was announced. “They fight for each other, they have a great togetherness and love for the game. I have a responsibility to the players to help turn our potential into prizes.”

On occasion, the team’s play was so adroit and flexible as to warrant the plaudits of being the arch exponents of ‘Total Football’; the standard filtered down to the Carling Cup second-stringers, whose difficult ties against first-choice Premier League line-ups were successfully negotiated and the club progressed to the semi-final for the fourth time in five seasons. Players who were not able to break into the starting line-up at the weekends performed in an equally dominant and watchable manner; their versatility was such that they looked at ease whatever part of the pitch they appeared in. After the mostly younger squad members had convincingly accounted for a full-strength Newcastle side, long-time supporter Brian Dawes expressed the view “We don’t need to buy another player for ten years!” The kids would go on to defeat a full-strength Blackburn Rovers away, despite being reduced to ten men. Meanwhile, their elders and betters remained undefeated and top of the league, two points clear of their free-spending rivals behind in the chasing pack. Arsenal were not only contenders for the title once again, as time progressed they became the bookies’ favourites.

The way the team were playing and the results achieved appeared a total vindication of the manager’s methods. On limited resources, he had produced a group of artists and artisans, the sum total of whom was more than the contributing parts. How else can you explain the creation of a world-class team with obvious individual deficiencies (Almunia, Senderos and Eboue being salient examples). Wenger had compiled his side as a balanced unit so that even the absence of a key component did not disrupt the strategy, Gallas and Rosicky both being out of action for some of the early fixtures.

A measure of the progress made was gauged when Arsenal travelled to Anfield at the end of October. In March, they had sunk to a humiliating 4–1 defeat there. A few months on, and Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez, despite overseeing the only other unbeaten top-flight team, opted to prioritise defence and set up a counter-attacking gameplan, regardless of home advantage. “Maybe Liverpool were a little bit afraid of us,” opined William Gallas in the aftermath of the 1–1 draw.

Robin van Persie succumbed again to injury after scoring five goals in seven appearances. It was fortunate then that his first-choice partner Emmanuel Adebayor had an even better strike rate, with six goals. The failure of Togo to qualify for the African Cup of Nations was an unexpected bonus, as Van Persie did not reappear regularly until mid-March (earlier attempts to return him to the fray merely aggravated his ailments). However, the squad did lose Kolo Toure, Emmanuel Eboue and Alexandre Song to the competition for a few weeks in January and February. As Adebayor’s rich vein of form continued, he often found himself playing as a lone striker, although occasionally Eduardo was drafted in to partner him.

With the team topping the table despite a first league defeat in December away to Middlesbrough, Wenger was faced with the dilemma of whether to strengthen his hand in the January transfer window. He told an acquaintance in December, “I am the happiest I have ever been with the team. This group of players has the potential to be the best I’ve ever worked with.” He was most pleased with the development of Mathieu Flamini and, as a result, his final summer signing Lassana Diarra found himself in the unlikely position of being selected for his country, but unable to displace his then uncapped compatriot in Arsenal’s eleven. Together with Gilberto, Abou Diaby and Denilson, the manager had a surfeit of midfield cover, which may have influenced his decision to sell Diarra to Portsmouth for a profit of £3 million. All the same, he was a talented and versatile player who could fill in at full back and anywhere across the midfield. To have picked up a French international so cheaply was a bargain, especially when Chelsea, of all clubs, could afford to hang on to him even if they had no intention of utilising his talents except in an emergency.

However, as Wenger later reflected, “I came to the conclusion that Diarra could not cope with the fact that he was behind the other players in midfield. If he had been able to be patient he would have got his chance. He wasn’t capable of that.” Matters came to a head when Diarra was reluctant to play in an FA Cup tie at Burnley. This eventually turned out to be a stroke of luck for him, Portsmouth ultimately winning the competition for the first time in 69 years and Diarra, a key element in his new team, feted as a hero, However, true to form, his start at Fratton Park was hardly auspicious. He announced that he would be using his new club as a stepping stone to greater things. “The people at Portsmouth know I will not spend my life at this club,” he said. “If I shine, if a really big club wants me, I know already that everything will go well.” How to win friends and influence people. The surprising conclusion from the episode was that Arsène Wenger brought in someone who rocked the boat to such an extent that he was forced to move him on at the first available opportunity.

With or without the Diarra money, there was a lot of cash in the kitty to strengthen the squad for the remainder of the season. Figures released by the club in 2008 revealed a cash balance of £69 million at the end of November 2007, of which £25 million was available to the manager for spending on new players and their wages. It remained unused. Wenger subsequently explained, “You have to keep the balance right between having competition and having too many players. The squad did not look light at any time.” However, at the conclusion of the season he admitted that his statistics had shown that his team had conceded more goals from long balls played into his central defence than any of his main rivals. “We gave more goals on direct balls, in the air, through the middle, and most of the time on second balls.” With hindsight, he might have taken a chance on Jonathan Woodgate from Middlesbrough, the 28-year-old England defender reputedly interested in joining the club, but who ultimately signed for Tottenham for a fee of £8 million.

Up front there was no need for reinforcements. Eduardo was given a run in the team after Christmas and did so well he was actually rested in the two Carling Cup semi-final clashes with Tottenham to preserve him for the league. His goal-poaching was badly missed as Spurs recorded victory over their neighbours in the second leg for the first time since the turn of the millennium. According to David Dein, “Arsène has a remarkable ability to communicate in a foreign language.” Brevity was Wenger’s forte as he summed up his response to that Spurs defeat to a friend. “The defence . . . mamma mia!” (More inventive was his use of the word the French had coined, ‘footballistic’, turning it into an English adverb to describe the talent of the then 16-year-old Fàbregas. After impressing in the 2003/04 Carling Cup, his manager enthused, “Footballistically, he’s ready for the first team.”) Nevertheless, Wenger could argue that the Carling Cup run had served its purpose as Lukasz Fabianski, Alexandre Song, Armand Traore, Denilson and others experienced first-team action.

Following three successive victories consolidating their position at the top of the table, four days before they were due to face Milan in the Champions League, Arsenal had to negotiate an FA Cup fifth-round away trip to Manchester United, their closest challengers in the Premier League. Would the manager stick with the first team or twist with rotation? Perhaps when the club’s official website announced the application details for tickets, they should have reminded the thousands of paying punters intending to make the long trip north of Arsène Wenger’s words from the previous March: “The FA Cup is a competition we love but [in 2006] when we went out early, we reached the final of the Champions League. [In 2007] we had two replays in the FA Cup, one just before the PSV Champions League tie and one right in between that and the next [leg]. We had already given a lot, playing 17 games in December and January. Also, we had no possibility to rotate the side because we had many injuries and then suspensions. So I think it was a mistake on my part. When we drew Blackburn at home we didn’t think we would go to a replay. When you have 60,000 fans in your own stadium you can never say you will sacrifice the game. But the replay? Perhaps I should have sacrificed it.”

Sacrifice: the concept in Wenger’s interpretation of deliberately giving something up in order to gain an advantage. By the time that the Old Trafford match kicked off, he knew that the next two scheduled FA Cup weekends could ensure league fixtures for his team if they were eliminated, with their opponents (Wigan and Liverpool) both already knocked out. If the road to Wembley was halted now it might be a blessing in disguise; midweeks could be the sole preserve of Champions League commitments, with domestic encounters in the Premier League limited to weekends. He couldn’t have planned it better if he tried, although maybe this idea was picked up by his players. In losing 4–0, once the first goal had been conceded most of them didn’t appear to try very hard at all. It was one of the most lacklustre displays the fans had ever witnessed from a Wenger team.

The fact that Wenger had rested a few players provided little comfort or mitigation, as Alex Ferguson had done likewise. Four regulars returned for the visit of Champions League holders AC Milan. Milan might have been group-stage winners, but in failing to top their own quartet Arsenal had become the runners-up none of the big boys fancied. Milan, content to return home with a clean sheet, showed limited attacking ambition. For Arsenal the 0–0 result would only be seen as a good one if they could avoid defeat in the return leg, but on the night the abiding feeling was one of what might have been had Emmanuel Adebayor not headed against the crossbar with the goal gaping in second-half injury time.

However, according to the manager’s rationale – less commitments, improving odds – the outlook in the Premier League remained optimistic. Wenger’s Arsenal teams had historically performed at their best domestically after the turn of the year. When league points were dropped, it was often in the first months of the season with the onset of winter bringing with it an air of vulnerability. So the two humiliating cup exits to Tottenham and Manchester United could be brushed aside as long as the ends ultimately justified the means. The pursuit of the Premier League crown was certainly on track, with a sequence of wins that showed the absent African internationals were not missed. The Adebayor/ Eduardo partnership was developing nicely so that the loss of Robin van Persie was not unduly felt. With 12 fixtures of the 38 outstanding, Arsenal led their nearest rivals by five points, having suffered a solitary defeat. So on the weekend of the Carling Cup Final, it would not have been unrealistic to envisage an eight-point lead with a victory at Birmingham. For instead of a training session in preparation for a trip to Wembley, Arsenal had a commitment at St Andrew’s on Saturday lunchtime due to its selection for live transmission on Sky.

In fact, Arsenal should have been sitting on an even bigger lead at the top of the table as they travelled to the Midlands. But in one of their most insipid performances of the season six weeks earlier, they had been held to a draw at home by Birmingham. So with the visiting fans anticipating retribution and three points, the St Andrew’s ground put on a three-act tragedy that took everyone by surprise. First and most distressing was the broken leg suffered by Eduardo as a result of a late challenge by opposition skipper Martin Taylor. Sky told their viewers it was “so horrific we do not want to show you that again”. While several minutes elapsed as Eduardo was treated and then taken on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance, his teammates were visibly distraught.

Taylor was given a straight red card, and so despite losing Eduardo Arsenal still had 87 minutes to play with a man advantage. However, they were so shaken by the traumatic incident that the half-time score was 1–0 to the ten men. At least it gave Arsenal 15 minutes to compose themselves, and it seemed like business as usual when Theo Walcott put them ahead with a brace before the second half was even ten minutes old. Birmingham were like a boxer on the ropes, awaiting the final blow that would end the contest, a strike that would give the visitors their desired eight-point lead over the chasing pack. Although Arsenal created some excellent opportunities and had a cast-iron penalty claim waved away, the knockout punch was never delivered. As injury time ticked down, Gaël Clichy allowed the ball to run across him in his own penalty area rather than hoof it clear. He failed to see Stuart Parnaby closing in to steal possession, but recovered by dispossessing him in the box.

Unfortunately, in making the challenge he also gave Paranaby the opportunity to fall over his outstretched leg and the referee to award a penalty. The spot kick would be effect ively the last action of the game, although if it was saved, there would be time for a shot on the rebound before referee Mike Dean blew his final whistle, so Arsenal’s players needed to be poised on the edge of the area to pounce on any loose ball.

But not William Gallas. It was all too much for the captain. He’d spent the previous week comforting Sagna over the tragic death of his brother, seen Eduardo’s harrowing injury and now an act of defensive naivety that looked as if it would result in the dropping of two precious points against opponents who were struggling at the other end of the table. He stood on the halfway line looking on in evident fury from afar. His action, or rather lack of it, effectively reducing his own side to ten men, didn’t ultimately affect events as the penalty was converted for a 2–2 draw, but his lack of preparation for any parry by Manuel Almunia would have made Gallas a poor boy scout. His response to the penalty being converted was to kick the advertising boards near the dugouts, for which he earned a yellow card. After a restart that lasted just a few seconds, Gallas then sat down on the pitch and stayed there. When everyone else had left the field Arsène Wenger walked over to his captain who eventually got to his feet and poured out his frustrations to his manager, who just listened.

In the space of moments, Wenger’s decision to award him the armband came back to haunt him. Then, Wenger had emphasised, “He has to set an example everywhere, not just on the pitch but off it as well.” Gallas had said all the right things, a few weeks before proclaiming, “Mentally, I think we are ready, but the tough games come now. When we feel tired we have to be strong in our minds, in our bodies.” But cometh the hour, where was the man? Gallas’s behaviour was more like that of an emotional supporter rather than a responsible and highly paid employee. Arsenal lost a player under horrific circumstances, threw away two points and had their captain go AWOL. William Gallas looked for all the world like his team had just conceded the title, when in fact the table showed them to be six points clear, albeit having played a game more. But what events at Birmingham seemed to do was halt the momentum of the leaders in their tracks, with fate and their own destructive tendencies acting against them in the fixtures that followed. Whether the captain’s post-match sit-in was a contribution to the decline or the result of his realisation that his young colleagues were not up to the task is academic. In his role, he should have known better than to behave in such an ignominious fashion.

When the season was over, Wenger reflected, “We could not win the next game [a 1–1 home draw with Aston Villa] and then confidence dropped a little bit. Then every time after that when we were in a situation leading 1–0, we did not have the same drive going forwards, we just wanted to keep the result because we had less confidence. That all started at Birmingham.”

March’s Premier League programme saw one deception after another for Arsenal. Ahead of the run of fixtures against Birmingham, Villa, Wigan and Middlesbrough, some Gooners were anticipating who the opposition might be when the title was confirmed. But these encounters saw a pitiful return of four points from a possible 12; certainly not the form of champions elect. The players who had shown they had it in them to ‘win ugly’ in Prague back in August had forgotten how to eke out victory when the chips were down. Arsène Wenger had once more failed to prepare his men to come out fighting and strong leadership on the field was conspicuous by its absence. It was difficult to imagine that Tony Adams or Patrick Vieira would have let control slip away in this manner.

Injuries compounded Wenger’s problems. Eduardo was on crutches, whilst Robin van Persie, though finally able to return never regained his early-season sharpness, a converted penalty his only goal in the first eight appearances after his mid-March comeback. The disappearance of Tomas Rosicky had the fans renaming him ‘Rosicknote’, as he did not feature again after the end of January, with the medical team apparently unable to explain why his hamstring injury was the cause of such a prolonged absence. Wenger was mystified. “It is not a serious injury but a strange one; he is not making much progress,” he said. “It is impossible to say when he will return. It is a frustration for me.” So much reliance had been placed on the good form of Emmanuel Adebayor that when his own scoring run hit a lean patch, results suffered.

Wenger was forced to field players – Theo Walcott and Nicklas Bendtner were tried as starters – whose form or readiness for the task in hand was found wanting, hardly a surprise given their youth and inexperience. The fragility of Arsenal’s situation was laid bare. The alchemist had accomplished so much with so many non-world-class performers, but now his unit had been breached. While United had Cristiano Ronaldo, Carlos Tévez et al and Chelsea a variety of international options, Wenger was forced to run arguably his only world-class star into the ground. The midfield appeared to visibly wilt, and the wisdom of letting Lassana Diarra go was again called into question. The dip in form may not have been purely down to physical reasons, but the decision to depend on younger players, whilst initially providing Wenger’s pace and power prerequisites, was shown to be misplaced. Would more experienced professionals have paced themselves better? By the time of the Birmingham game that changed the course of the season, Fàbregas had already made 30 appearances and Flamini 28. At the cam paign’s conclusion they had registered 45 and 40 respectively. It placed huge demands on two young men still learning their trade. Arsenal were top dogs for the first seven months of the campaign, but the only trophy handed out in February was the one that Wenger conceded to Tottenham by sending out a mix-and-match team at the semi-final stage of the Carling Cup.

Then in the midst of their woes Arsenal faced their most difficult assignment so far. They travelled to Milan needing to avoid defeat to progress to the Champions League quarter-final. At a time when they were producing turgid domestic displays, where exactly did they find the mettle that saw them dethrone the holders of the European Cup in their own backyard? The goals in the 2–0 victory might have come in the latter stages of the match, but the scoreline accurately reflected their superiority on the night. At times, Wenger’s young team ran rings round their illustrious foes, who at the same venue the previous April had made Premier League champions Manchester United look like continental novices. It was a remarkable triumph, and one of Arsenal’s great nights in Europe.

The contrast to domestic disappointment might be explained by the greater self-belief of opponents who consider themselves at least to be the equal if not superior to Arsenal. So there is more of a positive approach by both sides and less concentration by one team to simply deny the other. Greater space is a consequence, which is then expertly exploited by Wenger’s men. In an ironic way, it probably gives them a better chance of beating a Barcelona than a Bolton.

So even with major rivals on the horizon, perhaps all was not lost. In the Premier League, visits to Chelsea and Manchester United lay ahead. In the Champions League, the quarter-final draw saw them paired with Liverpool, the second leg at Anfield. The San Siro result was a reminder that Arsenal were capable of beating anyone anywhere, and if they could repeat their away form in the key clashes to come then maybe the season could still be salvaged. The table said that Arsenal had still only suffered a solitary league defeat after 30 matches. If they could keep that statistic going until the end, surely they could still take the title?