Southampton may have lost for the second time in four days, further evidence the brilliantly bold anti-gravity act of the opening four months of the season has hit its first patch of turbulence. But there was encouragement to be taken even in defeat at the Emirates Stadium, where for the opening 75 minutes of a slow-burn, ultimately rather frantic 1-0 Arsenal victory, Southampton were slick on the ball, physically robust and marginally the better team.
It is a mark of the Premier League’s sense of inviolable hierarchy that the continued presence of Ronald Koeman’s team in the top three should be considered such an anomaly. Even before this match the wider consensus was that the run of 10 games in which Southampton play Arsenal twice, Manchester United twice and both Chelsea and City was likely to provide a decisive correction to those early gains. Peak Southampton, the feeling was, might just have passed. And yet even here it took until the last 20 minutes for Arsenal to begin to assert their own familiar rhythms, capped by a spirited push against 10 men, with Toby Alderweireld off injured, that ended with Alexis Sánchez poking home the winning goal.
Whatever the result, it was always likely this match would provide evidence of the qualities so many neutrals admire. For a start this was, from a certain angle, a clash of the Premier League’s most celebrated youth systems. Not that this is much of a contest right now, given Jack Wilshere and Kieran Gibbs are the only graduates of Arsenal’s academy to have started a league game this season. Whereas over the past 10 years Southampton have produced something close to an entire composite Team GB in the shape of Wayne Bridge, Chris Baird, Nathan Dyer, Gareth Bale, Adam Lallana, Luke Shaw, Calum Chambers, Theo Walcott and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.
It is a sign of the acquisitive flux of the Premier League that with James Ward-Prowse injured Southampton’s starting XI did not feature a single member of their own wonderfully fecund youth system, while Arsenal lined up with Chambers and Oxlade-Chamberlain as an all-Southampton right flank, from which their brightest early moments came.
For much of the opening hour, though, this was a match that illustrated Southampton’s enduring sense of balance as much as Arsenal’s familiar strengths and frailties. There is something hugely alluring about Koeman’s chop-and-change team, a uniformity of build and method, with every outfield player technically sound and quick to the ball. For most of the first half they made football look very simple, a matter of short passing, well-drilled movement and a cultured, if rather blunt-edged hulk of a centre forward in Graziano Pellè.
By contrast Arsenal were a flaccid impersonation of the team who had overpowered Borussia Dortmund last week. Aaron Ramsey was again wild in his passing, while Mathieu Flamini, the midfield bollard in a 4-1-3-2 formation was often little more than a static obstacle. There were times during the quieter moments when you half expected to look up and see him sitting on a camping stool in the centre circle.
The loss to injury of the impressive Jack Cork after 28 minutes left Southampton’s midfield, already without Morgan Schneiderlin, horribly depleted. It was at a similar stage at the weekend, with Schneiderlin off the field, that Southampton had been overrun by Manchester City’s powerhouse midfield.
Here, though,there was simply a sense once again of Arsenal’s lack of a gear change in that area. There are no Yaya Tourés in this team, although Oxlade-Chamberlain did his best to drive at this visitors’ defence with the ball at his feet. Otherwise there was again an absence of leadership, a lack of the drive, swagger and bullying athleticism Thierry Henry – currently encased, in carbonite, Han Solo style, somewhere between New York and north London – once provided.
Southampton simply carried on playing neat, purposeful football, one arm lopped off here, a leg severed there, an entire crop of self-generated talent lanced over there, but still looking like a team entirely comfortable intheir own skin.
To Arsène Wenger’s credit – and with sections of the crowd already warming up for a final-whistle barracking – the introduction of Olivier Giroud changed the game. Bolstered by that adhesive central presence, Arsenal began to play more directly, and Giroud to gather in and manipulate the ball to good effect. Sánchez’s goal, his 14th of the season, was a deserved reward for another warrior-like performance, and above all a simple refusal to yield.
Southampton will take heart from their performance in defeat here, just as the Premier League should treasure this team’s continued residency at the top end of the table. It is simply not possible for an upstart team to exist for long in the upper reaches in this league, not without an almost continual process of rebuilding. Money will not allow it. Other clubs’ squads will always be bigger: before long they will be bigger simply because they contain most of your best players. For now, though, and with Manchester United and Louis van Gaal next up, this excellent, orderly, rather stretched group of Saints march on.
