A good weekend or a missed opportunity for Arsenal: Both 

Here's Charlie Ashmore with his must-read take on the weekend's result as Inter Milan vs Arsenal looms 

1 - A good weekend

Let’s start with the feelgood aspect. 

Would any of us at the start of the weekend have turned down an outcome where we extended the lead at the top over Manchester City? 

I suspect not and here we are now seven points clear with 16 games to go.  Remember, to win the league from here we just have to match or better City’s results every week – I caveat that by recognising Aston Villa remain in the mix currently but I am firmly of the view that if we finish above City we win the League. [Completely agree - Gooner ed]

While we remain more than six points clear we have a buffer as well which allows us to lose at City and still have a cushion.

I am not saying we will lose at City or that we should expect to, quite the contrary. 

However, I am as scarred as all of you by three second place finishes so remain cautious – more cautious perhaps than what is unfolding should lead me to be.

 2 - But it’s another missed opportunity

That’s two 0-0 draws in a row. That’s two occasions when City have given us an opportunity to twist the knife and show them a clean pair of heels and we haven’t.  It is hugely frustrating to me that we could right now be 11 points clear and yet we are “only” seven points clear. 

The performances against Liverpool and Forest weren’t good enough. They weren’t enterprising enough. Did we play like champions? No. Did we play like champions elect? No.

We played like a team that is scared of letting it slip. That is scared of making mistakes. Are we a better or easier watch than the team that City reeled in a couple of years ago? Or even the team from three years ago?  No.

Except that the context is different. 

We are bruised by a series of second place finishes and do not want to let this opportunity slip away.

We are being helped by City themselves not firing on all cylinders.  Those two things combined with a third factor (see below) are making us cautious. 

Who knows….if City were pushing harder would we be having to be braver?  I am not sure I want to find out.

3 - Two seemingly conflicting things can be true about our manager

The reason we are in the position we are is Mikel Arteta. 

He has taken a club that was a shambles when he took over and made us into consistent challengers and one of the best in Europe. 

That is unarguable in my view. 

Our defensive play is elite level and it runs through the whole of his first choice XI. Back up or new players whose standards slip defensively appear to pay the price – witness Eberechie Eze whose switch off at Villa cost us big time when he allowed Matty Cash to steal in unopposed at the far post. 

Eze has not played in the wide position since. Nor has he started a Premier League game.  That elite level defensive play is down to coaching and that is down to Arteta. 

Credit where credit is due. 

But, if giving credit for the good, then it is fair to question the bad – if indeed it is bad. 

I don’t think a single one of us would argue with the proposition that there are times at the moment when we appear to be just too cautious. And that must be from the manager as well. The way we play has developed over the last few years and the trend has been towards control and caution. The one breeds the other. If you want to control a match completely you have to eliminate risk. 

To eliminate risk you move towards caution – the percentages mean the safe play takes priority and there is no safer play than passing to the unmarked player. 

The problem with that from a watching point of view is how dull it is because it means so much of the passing is sideways or backwards when the feeling is that if we just took that handbrake off and went for teams we could blow them away.  But, and here’s the rub, to do that you have to take risks – be prepared to lose the ball in trying that tricky through ball, in taking on the dribble. 

It also means you run the risk of teams hitting you on the break when your defensive structure is not set. 

So the truth is you will lose the odd game you would not lose if you played cautious controlling football. 

At the end of the day Arteta wants the same thing we do: To win. 

He is being pragmatic – he has seen us fall down with the free flowing stadium emptying football of a couple of years ago. 

He is now seeing us extend our lead at the top with controlling football.

The truth for us all is it may be a duller watch but if we win the League how much will we care? 

I think right now we just have to get behind the grind and trust it will see us over the line. 

If it doesn’t, well that is the time to ask questions.

4 - doing better in the moments that matter

One of the consequences of the way we play is that it puts pressure on players to do everything right when opportunities do present themselves. 

The control ethos means you are going to generate fewer chances so when they arise you have to take them so you have to maximise both chance creation and crucially chance conversion. 

To the former point:  just how many misplaced passes were there through the course of the game?

To the latter point:  Gabi Martinelli should have scored.  Martin Zubimendi should have scored. Vitkor Gyokeres could have scored (the Gyokeres of Sporting Lisbon would probably have done so).

Mikel Merino glanced a header wide but in doing so took it away from the better placed Gabriel. 

So even when we are playing poorly and in an unsatisfying way, we manage to create enough to win the game but we fail to execute properly in the areas that matter. 

It is often said by players and coaches that success is in the details.  Well, taking your chances is the ultimate in footballing detail and that is where our biggest frailty lies currently.

5 - VAR and the penalty that wasn’t

I am talking of course about Ola Aina’s handball late in the game.  

First let me say that I was surprised when the corner was held up because of the VAR check. 

It happened in front of us and I was at the right angle to have a view of it.  It never occurred to me live that a handball might have taken place. 

I wasn’t aware of anyone around me appealing.  

So that’s the first point for me and counts against it being a penalty and until I saw it on TV I assumed that was going to be my final thought. 

As for the decision making, the angle of play was such that neither ref nor lineman had any chance of seeing it.  For me that gives VAR more opportunity to get involved. 

It’s not re-refereeing if the ref didn’t see it in the first place.    So what does one see on camera. 

Personally I think what happened and what one can see clearly is that the ball strikes Aina on the shoulder and is then going out of play for a corner. 

It is what happens next that is critical. There is a plain move of the arm towards the ball and it is obvious that what he is trying unsuccessfully to do is to keep the ball in play rather than give away a corner.  In other words, he deliberately (whether it was an instinctive reaction or not) tries to gain an advantage through the use of his arm and it’s in the process of doing so that the offence occurs. 

For me that has to be handball, however soft it might be.

It is the clear attempt to manoeuvre the ball with the arm that makes it an offence.   

There is one caveat – was the ball already in fact off when the contact occurred – if so then it can’t be handball. And so I come back to an old bugbear. The very existence of VAR. 

What is it good for? 

My glib response is – absolutely nothing.

But given that it is here and its job is to correct clear and obvious wrong decisions, here was a situation where something happens that the ref cannot see, VAR sees it clearly and at the very least the referee should be given the chance to see it – after all  he has not yet made a positive decision because he simply cannot have seen it happen live. 

So what we actually end up with is precisely what they say they are trying to avoid – someone in a caravan refereeing the decision instead of letting the match ref do it.    

VAR has had another bad week – the inconsistent approach to offside evident in the League Cup semi-finals was embarrassing. 

So I say it again.  Get rid of VAR for the good of the game – it does more harm than good.

 See you in Milan.