MISSED OPPORTUNITY
There are moments in a title race that simply sit there, quietly, asking more questions. The 0-0 against Liverpool at the Emirates was one of those moments. I can live with the result because a 0-0 against Liverpool is not catastrophic. Football is not arithmetic; points don’t always tell the emotional truth of a performance.
But what I can’t reconcile is our second half performance, especially when the first half made it clear that Liverpool were there for the taking. That second half performance felt uncomfortably familiar. Wolves came rushing back into my mind because of the behaviour. Out of possession, we were passive, safe and almost apologetic. Every single player looked like they wanted the game to pass through them rather than be shaped by them.
The Wolves game was meant to be a wake up call. This felt like the alarm going off again, louder this time, and us still hesitating to get out of bed. That’s the part that lingers — not the missed chances, but the withdrawal. The sense that, instead of leaning into the opportunity, we retreated from it, as if the weight of what was at stake became heavier the closer we got to it.
Liverpool versus Arsenal used to be end to end, high scoring, frantic games where control was abandoned and emotion took over. This season, however, these fixtures have felt like chess played in slow motion. We were almost afraid of the consequence, and maybe that tells us more than we want to admit. Because when you’re trying to win a league title after 22 years of waiting, control can become a crutch. Safety can start to feel like progress, and moments that demand bravery can instead expose doubt.
This is where mentality is questioned by the game itself. Every time an opportunity isn’t seized, questions emerge about the manager, about the players, and about whether this group truly believes (deep down) that it is allowed to finish the story, that it can act with freedom when history starts whispering reminders of past failures.
I have made up my mind that winning our first league title is going to be a struggle. It demands that we push hardest not when things are going well, but when we stumble, when doubt creeps in, when the safety of “not losing” tempts us away from the risk of “going for it.” That’s the mental block, and mental blocks don’t dissolve through reassurance; they dissolve through action.
This was an opportunity missed, and opportunities — both in football and in life — are indifferent. They don’t care how prepared you think you are. They don’t wait until you feel comfortable. They arrive when they arrive, and if you don’t grab them with both hands, they have a habit of returning later in less forgiving forms.
At this moment in time, the result isn’t disastrous. A six‑point lead, which was only two weeks ago, still gives us control, margin and belief. But control without conviction is fragile. What matters now is not the table, but the response; not the narratives, but the behaviour. Doors to promised lands don’t reward patience alone. They break down only when you push with enough force, enough belief, enough refusal to hide.
This Arsenal team is close, painfully close. And closeness is dangerous because it tempts you into thinking that arrival is inevitable. It isn’t, though, and it has to be taken. That is the question this Arsenal side will need to answer in due time.