Fulham 1-1 Arsenal (Jimenez 11′ | Saliba 52′)
CRAVEN COTTAGE — Points of difference have to amount to something other than corners.
Arsenal once again made their set-piece mark but games like this suggest they will have to come up with more than that if they are to chase down Liverpool.
It is not as though the Fulham brick wall came as a surprise. That’s three successive Premier League draws against Fulham. Arsenal of course bemoaned the cancelling of Bukayo Saka’s late header for a marginal offside, yet for all that, against a determined, well-organised opponent, Arsenal did not create enough despite their control.
Perhaps Arsenal’s plunder of the Seventies playbook might stretch to the long diagonal punt as well as big lads up for corners. Anything to break the monotony of their precision elegance. Arsenal’s style is so on trend the patterns are everywhere across the Premier League and, frankly, no longer surprising, no matter the class of those shaping the action.
Though it might seem absurd to aim a blow at the general excellence of Saka, Martin Odegaard, Declan Rice, Thomas Partey, William Saliba, et al, each exceptional again, the fact remains Fulham were a long way from capitulating.
Indeed, after ten minutes of relentless tiki-taka from Arsenal, Fulham swept through the Gunners’ highfalutin coaching manual with a welcome dose of simplicity. Remember the days when centre-forwards ran off centre-halves with pace and aggression? Raul Jimenez does, slipping off Jakub Kiwior’s shoulder to steal the lead with an arrow into the bottom corner.
With the complexion of today’s teams so similar, obsessively playing out from the back, midfielders on the half-turn, full-backs tucking in, what a delight it was to see the ball played forwards quickly by Sander Berge and dispatched without fuss.
Arsenal’s corner routines and the chaos they bring remain a remarkable weapon, catching Fulham as cold in the second half here as they did Manchester United on Wednesday. A six-yard box empty of Arsenal shirts is a strange piece to read. Without a body to mark, defenders are necessarily reacting to the trigger points of others.
When the rush came, Arsenal threw in a variant, Kai Havertz delaying his run sufficiently to find empty space at the back stick. A free header across goal left Saliba with the simplest of chances. Fulham felt like fools for falling for the dummy.
For Mikel Arteta this has to be considered a missed opportunity, two points dropped on a weekend Liverpool were idle. A fifth draw already seems too many in a season when City are serving up goodies by taking themselves out of the equation.
Arteta believed his team deserved the win. Of course he did. They were a VAR fraction from taking three points, yet this type of game proves the need for variety.
It seems Arsenal have perfected the art of passing and moving at the very point the game is moving on. The intensity of Liverpool and Chelsea offer a dimension Arsenal do not, aggression and pace as well as technique.