There can’t be many things more Arsenal than this: a lithe, ripplingly incisive midweek 2-0 cuffing-aside of West Brom four games from the end of an already zombified season. Except, perhaps, a routine cuffing-aside that also features Olivier Giroud mooching about in odd-coloured boots like a teenager on summer holidays wondering where the TV remote has gone.
A first win in three games moved Arsenal back up the table into third place. Games against Sunderland, Norwich, Manchester City and Aston Villa to come should ensure the profitable status quo for another year. And so: into the arms of fourth place.
If there was anything notable about this Arsenal victory it was perhaps simply the peculiar atmosphere inside the Emirates. Not so much anger, or trapped rage, as weariness, disinterest, even a little boredom.
It was a nice occasion in its own way. There were ripples of applause as Arsenal revved through the gears. For all the pre-match tremors, there were no boos or jeers or cries of Arsène Out. The same one or two people held up the same home-made signs of dissent for the TV cameras. Like a well-incubated marital argument, this one will, perhaps, simply stew a little from here.
Before kick-off the only tangible comment on the trajectory of Arsenal’s season was the feel of the place. Problems with the tube were a factor.
Beyond that there were scattered empty seats and the sound, not just of silence but of indifference: some scratchy applause, echoing whoops and cheers, a few pairs of hands, tiny in all that air, applauding.
Arsenal kicked off and settled into a spell of sideways passing. Perhaps with time Mohamed Elneny will find the confidence to drive a little in midfield. For now he is a diligent lurker. Before long Alexis Sánchez produced a lovely goal out of nowhere, dropping low and using the flat of his hand on the grass to pirouette his way around Sandro, before burying the ball in the corner.
It was a brilliant movement, Sánchez completing his circumnavigation of Cape Sandro before his man had even begun to engage the rudder, and scoring his fourth in four games.
There were cheers and a few moments later the first chorus of “Stand up if you hate Tottenham” (oddly heartfelt). The Emirates has been a cauldron of tetchiness at times, the air a little soured by repetition, by the same old irritations. Here it comes again. The same arc of hope and collapse then, dimly, hope again.
The fact is football isn’t supposed to be about stasis, however lucrative.
It is on some level a passion-play, a horrible, painful, enthrallingly addictive thing. Deprived of that fix of drama and hope there is a throbbing impatience around the Emirates. Part of the fascinating tedium of this Arsenal is the way an institution can come to resemble a single dominant person: the same blind spots and omissions year after year, like a map of one man’s character.
And so for a while here Arsenal skated around like Arsenal, Sánchez fizzing about like a brilliantly angry Star Wars figure, the right flank the only real point of pace in this starting XI. There has been talk from the manager of a basic lack of athleticism, of opponents overpowering his team late on, the need for an injection of power. There is, let’s face it, no shortage of candidates for a close-season chucking out of the chintz.
Plenty have shrunk from the fray. In the bleak times through the spring Mesut Özil, such a beautiful footballer when he finds his rhythm, has done whatever the opposite of manning up is – manning down, manning off – gliding about the periphery, reeling off the odd pointless goal.
Giroud, a worthy back-up striker, has two goals in his last 18 games. Here he basically did nothing at all beyond an expert piece of getting out of the way for the second goal. As he dawdled by the right touchline in the first half he seemed to be expending considerably less energy than Tony Pulis capering about in his rectangle.
Eventually Sánchez got his second, a minor triumph for Giroud as ducked in the wall and allowed a soft free-kick to ripple the bottom corner of the net. And after half-time Arsenal played some nice stuff. Alex Iwobi has been the find of the second half of the season, a nice, neat, fearless ball-player, whose emergence has also emphasised the wet flannel effect close to goal of more senior players such as Theo Walcott and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.
At times Iwobi’s eagerness was even a bit of a hindrance in this team, as he seemed to be almost elbowing Özil out of the way, galloping across the centre, hogging the ball in front of the most unassertive World Cup-winning No10 you’re ever likely to come across. By the final whistle, as the Emirates emptied, there was, above all, a sense of endings in sight, if not perhaps quite yet. The challenge for Wenger in that final year will be not just to change the familiar patterns, but to fight the creeping sense of fin de siècle indifference.
