Well now, it appears as though we got away with one yesterday, eh?

After the disappointment of the Brighton game, I think a lot of us had thought “that’s it. All over. Liverpool to canter to the title now” but here we all are, the morning after they have drawn 2-2 with what has been described as an absolutely terrible United side, having not lost ground on them after our slip up away at the Amex.

I don’t know about you, but it feels like it’s been a bit of a double-edged sword kind of weekend. On the one hand I am of course delighted; we all breathe a sigh of relief and where we all though the mountain to reach to was too great to get to this Liverpool side who have blitzed through the first half of the season, we still have a chink of light and a small chance that we can. The performance of the Scousers shows that they are not infallible too; they have been conceding a fair few goals of late and when you do that you always leave yourselves open to slip ups. This season has been billed by many as ‘best attack in the league’ versus ‘best defence in the league’ between us and Liverpool, but if you can maintain your strong back line, you do give yourself a better chance of winning games I reckon. We have to hope that Liverpool’s defensive cracks start to widen, because that will result in more dropped points if it does.

The more I think about it, the more that it feels like what is happening to Liverpool now is what happened to us two season’s back. We were running hot at a 100-point pace until after Christmas (until the end of January if my memory serves me right) and a few key injuries to Saliba and Tomiyasu basically derailed our season, because Holding had to come in for a bit and it was a bit of disaster as we shipped goals left, right and centre. Even after we’d built up a lead and were still top, I think a lot of us Gooners were looking at the goals allowed column and furrowing our brows over the volume we were conceding, and had been all season that year. But Man City clicked in to gear and we ended up wilting.

I’m not sure the conditions are exactly the same this time, which might see Liverpool get over the line, because we haven’t shown the WWWWWW mentality of City this season. There’s still enough time for it to happen, but Liverpool have a bigger points haul than we did that year (think we got up to eight clear of City, but they always had a game in hand) and their rivals are slipping up every time they do.

That’s the other side of the double-edged sword that I mentioned, because although I’m delighted they dropped points, I’m also frustrated that every time they seem to drop points, we aren’t taking advantage. When they drew at home to Fulham, we drew to Everton. When we drew away to Brighton, they drew to Man United. You turn those two draws in to wins and suddenly it’s a two point gap and feeling very catchable. But we cannot afford to keep on dropping points when they do.

Perhaps there’s some mitigation. Brighton away is a tough place to go. They are draw experts. We’ve had a sickness bug going through the camp which has seen us lose Rice from the start, as well as Havertz and Ødegaard was impacted too and couldn’t play. The starting line up certainly looked depleted against the Seagulls and hopefully we get some players back tomorrow night against Newcastle. But we need to shape up if we want to chase down Liverpool. That points gap they have needs eroding asap because we are going to start running short on games if we aren’t careful.

There’s still a long way to go, we’re only at the halfway point in the season, but now we need to start finishing games off like the Brighton one. And that turns your eyes towards the transfer market, because you only need to look at the fact that Nwaneri is now potentially injured for a while having been taken off at halftime at the Amex, to see that again we are looking a bit threadbare. I hope the club are pushing hard and are looking at every possible option. If it means a loan deal from overseas then fine, but we need something, we need a spark, we need to inject something into an attacking front line who are looking a bit stuttery and spluttery. We have two games in the next week against tough opposition that will mean little rotation for Arteta I suspect, but he will need to have some kind of answer because Newcastle and probably United will come to frustrate us on our own patch. We have to be ready for that.

Right, I’m offski, as I’m travelling to Cape Town from Frranschoek today. Have yourselves a great one.