The thing that maybe should niggle in the back of Arsenal minds today is that Erling Haaland actually had a point.
As the Manchester City forward exited the stage at the end of Arsenal’s evisceration of his team at the Emirates on Sunday, he pointed to the badge on his arm that marks him out as a Premier League title winner. Twice.
Petty? Yes. Desperate? After such a mauling, maybe a little.
But it was pertinent just the same because as much as we admire Arsenal for their ambition, their energy, their growing belief and their unarguably deep well of talent, they are not a team of winners.
Not now, not yet. They win big matches but – more than five years into Mikel Arteta’s reign – they are not a team that wins big trophies.
And this is the challenge that stands before them now. We know the direction that Pep Guardiola and his City team are travelling. Arsenal can take joy from that as they have suffered at the champions’ hands in recent years.
Erling Haaland made a pertinent point to Arsenal even after he was on the end of a hammering
Haaland had a running battle with Gabriel and reminded him which team are champions
Myles Lewis-Skelly is a fantastic talent – but should he be taking the mickey out of Haaland?
Twice they have run them close for the Premier League title, twice they have wound up shredded by the wheels of Abu Dhabi’s threshing machine.
But there must be more than this for Arsenal now. There must be trophies. They have three left to play for over the next four months – the league, the Carabao Cup and the Champions League – and it feels as though they simply must find a way to win one of them.
Individual victories mean something. They build confidence and belief and unity. They strengthen bonds within and serve to build an aura. You beat a team like City 5-1 and people certainly look at you differently.
Ultimately, however, the challenges for all top teams are greater than that, they are more rounded.
Arsenal, for example, are in Newcastle on Wednesday night seeking to overturn a 2-0 deficit from the first leg of the Carabao Cup semi-final against Eddie Howe’s team.
Newcastle have just lost at home to Fulham in the Premier League, having shipped four to Bournemouth in their previous match on Tyneside.
So there is a vulnerability to pick at there. There is an opportunity to make good on Sunday’s big win and kick on. Statement wins tend to lose their authority when you don’t manage to back them up.
Arteta’s Arsenal team are an emotional group and he is an emotional coach. It is very much part of what they are and it can work. Teams can run hot off the back of the energy it brings.
Haaland had just nine touches at the Emirates but one of them was the equaliser for City
Equally, there always has to be a middle ground between that and a steadiness of heart and mind. Have Arsenal fallen the wrong side of that line in the past? Possibly so. Finding that balance remains a challenge for them.
Sunday at the Emirates was awash with ill-feeling and City had whipped much of it up previously. Haaland encouraged Arteta – once a City coach of course – to ‘stay humble’ after the teams drew 2-2 in Manchester last September.
On seeing young Myles Lewis-Skelly on the periphery of that argument, he asked him: ‘Who the f*** are you?’ It was unnecessary and it was patronising.
So the weekend’s victory was undoubtedly seen as payback for all of that. Arsenal had waited a while for their moment and they had their say. City have grown used to coming to the Emirates and having things their own way.
No longer. Arsenal had lanced a boil and they enjoyed it thoroughly. Quite right.
Lewis-Skelly’s part in it was interesting and fundamental. The goal he scored in the second half to make it 3-1 was pivotal to the victory and the first for a teenager who – along with fellow goalscorer Ethan Nwaneri – has come through the ranks at the club.
Arsenal are rightly proud of both of them. Lewis-Skelly – already involved in a red card controversy at Wolves a week earlier – chose to mark his strike by mimicking one of Haaland’s goal celebrations.
The Emirates loved it and so did his team-mates. Choosing to celebrate your first senior goal by taking the mickey out of a chap who has scored more than 250 of them by the age of 24 and has a Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup Treble to his name was a bold move.
Arsenal are still alive in the Carabao Cup despite losing the semi-final first leg 2-0 to Newcastle
The 2020 FA Cup remains Arsenal’s only major trophy under Mikel Arteta
Whether it was the right one will perhaps become clear over time but Arteta did hint after the game that it may be preferable for his players to concentrate on the challenges ahead, rather than involve themselves in playground mocking of a powerful and storied rival.
‘It’s down to the players but they know my view on it,’ said Arteta.
‘We have to focus on us and leave anything else that happens. We’ve been in football a long time. Just leave it. There’s nothing there to do.’
It felt like a timely intervention from Arteta, a coach who knows City will come again at some stage and also feels the power and quality of a Liverpool team that holds a six-point lead at the top of the league with a game in hand.
With Liverpool in mind, it’s hard to imagine Arne Slot’s players being dragged into something so personal and aggravating as what we witnessed on Sunday.
Great teams can be nasty. You may say it’s a prerequisite. But to become as emotionally invested as Arsenal sometimes appear is a different thing altogether.
Arteta may feel that his emotionally invested style works for this group of players
Arteta may feel it works for this particular group. The Spaniard would be wise to worry less about what the outside world thinks and says and care only about the dynamics at play within.
Even so, he may wish to ease Lewis-Skelly back to earth gently. The great Brian Clough would undoubtedly have asked him to play for the reserves this week but those days are gone and perhaps it’s for the best.
As the dust settled at the Emirates on Sunday, it certainly felt as though Arsenal’s season was coming to the boil at the right time. They remain a fabulously gifted football team and they will feel now that they have proved a point.
And maybe they have. The problem is that it’s only early February and the really important battles are yet to play out.
