Arsenal’s title hopes take another knock after goalless draw against Everton
Inevitability is a dangerous sensation in football. Nothing is ever certain. No matter how great the general sense of domination, no matter how impressive the possession stats, at some point a team still has to go and actually put the ball in the net. For a long time on Saturday the sense was that Arsenal would score at some point. They had to. They had all the ball.
They were only playing Everton. There were enough chances and half-chances to maintain the general feeling that a breakthrough would come. But it did not – and so, with Liverpool dropping points, another opportunity to close the gap at the top was missed.
For the second week in a row, Arsenal looked short of ideas against a side who sat deep and defended in numbers – even if they might think themselves unlucky not to have been awarded a penalty for Vitalii Mykolenko’s late lunge on Thomas Partey. It’s three and a half league games now since they scored from open play. It’s one thing to make a virtue of set-pieces, quite another for that to become the only means of attack.
