It was only the second time Arsenal had been behind in a Premier League game at Emirates Stadium this season, but the heavy sense of dread was palpable among home fans when Patrick Dorgu rattled home a stunning strike to make it 2-1 to Manchester United in the 50th minute on Sunday.
Matheus Cunha's sensational late winner shortly after Mikel Merino's scrambled set-piece equaliser was understandably the main focus after the game, along with the smattering of boos that accompanied the final whistle.
But the period from Dorgu's strike until that moment felt like three-quarters of an hour where around 60,000 people endured some sort of mass form of purgatory.
Arsenal have waited 22 years for the English title and finished runners-up in each of the past three seasons. Anxiety and tension is entirely understandable in this situation. It was still notable to see a stadium that has been a fortress this season so quickly assume the foundations of sand.
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Let's be clear: Arsenal should still win the league. Opta's supercomputer still gives them an 81.74% chance. For all the credit accrued since his December 2019 appointment, there is a sense that Mikel Arteta simply must do it this season.
Champions Liverpool have collapsed despite twice breaking the British transfer record last summer. Manchester City, who beat Arsenal into second place in 2022/23 and 2023/24, understandably loom large in the Gunners' collective psyche. A routine 2-0 win over Wolves brought Pep Guardiola's team to within four points of the leaders, but it was their first Premier League victory of 2026 and came after a week featuring humiliating losses to United and Bodo/Glimt. They have trips to Tottenham and Liverpool up next in the Premier League, two teams in far-from-great form (is everyone in the Premier League just a bit rubbish this season?), but grounds where City have frequently dropped points with far better sides.
Hauge's golazo vs Man City 💛#UCL pic.twitter.com/Tnwhor90oH
— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) January 22, 2026
And this is the key thing about City in 2026: they are not them anymore. Quite literally in a sense, given Guardiola has 11 players in his first-team squad who were not there 12 months ago, while multiple-title winners Kevin De Bruyne, Ilkay Gundogan and Kyle Walker are club greats who have left during a period of high-volume player churn.
Arteta knows better than most that City are not the same, given he was on the coaching staff as Guardiola's formidable team racked up a record-breaking 100 points in 2017/18 and pipped Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool with 98 the season after. There is nothing like that City team or Klopp's Reds in the current landscape. We should not forget that Aston Villa are level with City on 46 points and have beaten both of the top two this season. There is, nevertheless, the sense that Unai Emery's side are operating at the very limit of their capabilities — one the manager himself seemed to openly share after Villa's recent loss to Everton.
In short, there are plenty of reasons not to panic; plenty of reasons not to plunge headfirst into title-race psychosis.
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Mikel Arteta panicked against Man United
"That's part of the demands and expectations that we want to win, and that's it," Arteta said when asked about the full-time boos, which definitely came from an exasperated minority. "Individually, everybody can react in the manner that they need to. It doesn't matter; we have to do more, so maybe that's not enough. We have to do more; there's nothing else. We have to do our very best.
"When you do that, you can rest in peace. Today, we really certainly tried to do our very best, but we weren't efficient enough against a team that is very well organised, and we got punished because of our own mistakes as well."
This sounds like the guy you'd want helming your title challenge: cool, calm and on the level. Arsenal don't have to look too far towards other Premier League big beasts to see how rare it is to have a manager so in-step with his club and capable of elevating all around him.
It's why the manner in which Arteta handled the United game feels like the biggest worry from the weekend.
The situation demanded calm and, specifically, an acknowledgement that there was loads of time left in the game for Arsenal to beat a team they're considerably better than. In the circumstances, Arteta chose the frankly wild option of a quadruple substitution, the sort of thing that screams calm composure if you'd just necked 17 Red Bulls. The overall result was Arsenal playing on a loop from just past the hour mark, as if there were five minutes left.
The personnel shifts were also unhelpful. Martin Zubimendi was maddeningly culpable for Bryan Mbeumo's first-half equaliser, but removing him and dumping Declan Rice to the base of the midfield was a horrible misstep. Rice is probably Arsenal's player of the season, a talismanic figure whose driving presence from midfield gives this team its edge. He can do that because of Zubimendi's smart work behind him.
When chasing the game, Arteta chose to take Rice out of the position where he could do the most damage to United. He also put him into a holding role where he has seldom played his best football, with the added responsibility of having to shackle Bruno Fernandes, who he promptly brought down to be booked.
Noni Madueke came on as Arsenal's fifth and final substitute, meaning Bukayo Saka was also out of position on the left wing by the end of the match. It was a mess entirely of Arteta's making.
How many of Arsenal's goals have been set-pieces?
By that point, it had come to feel like Arsenal were playing to win corners. Ultimately, this worked for Merino's equaliser. But the fact that they are 17th in the Premier League in terms of their percentage of goals scored from open play (57.1%) feels almost too absurd to be true. Much like the stadium they hadn't lost a league game at all season, Arsenal's set-piece prowess came to feel like a perverse weakness on Sunday as all other types of attacking inspiration drained from view. The team that battered Villa 4-1 less than a month ago was nowhere to be seen.
Saka, Leandro Trossard, Gabriel Martinelli and Noni Madueke have simply ceased to score Premier League goals. Victor Gyokeres had a couple of confidence boosters in cup action against Chelsea and Inter, but he is without a Premier League goal from open play in 11 outings.
1,010 - It’s been 1,010 minutes (over 16 hours) since Viktor Gyökeres last scored a league goal from open play, back on 13th September against Nottingham Forest. Challenge. Pic.twitter.com/NY2j4vuV40
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) January 9, 2026
Perhaps those Chelsea and Inter games can be instructive. Arsenal were excellent in both matches, making light of potentially tough away games. A 3-2 defeat flattered Chelsea, while they went blow for blow with Inter to dispatch them 3-1 at San Siro. Arsenal could have scored more in each of those victories, away from the pressures of their home ground and the gnawing mental weight of the Premier League title race.
Those performances are as tangible as the 0-0 drudgery against Liverpool and Nottingham Forest that preceded Sunday's disappointment. There really is no need to panic — unless Arteta panics as he did against Manchester United a few more times.