We are told that Mikel Arteta was frustrated and angry. Pretty much at one with the crowd then, although he called it “a bad feeling in the tummy”. Although for the [Telegraph](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2025/05/03/arsenal-vs-bournemouth-live-premier-league-score-latest/) to translate that into saying “Much was nauseating for Arsenal” was a bit silly. Terrible results happen; they tend not to happen to Champions but they happen to clubs that have hoped to be champions but aren’t, and clubs that face a league match prior to a much bigger cup match. It shouldn’t be like this, but it can be.
Then again, it doesn’t happen to the very biggest of clubs pushing their way through to trophies, but Arsenal, for all the incredible improvement from the death agonies of the last manager’s reign, are not there yet. We all want them to be, but they are not.
Of course the response of some is to call for revolution – or the nearest thing football clubs have in that regard – the sacking of the manager. But to throw away all this progress and bring someone else in, would take us back in time and would lose the progress that has been made. And would the stars of this team wait for a few more years of reworking? I doubt it.
What is true is that my predictions of Arsenal having little difficulty in hanging on to second place have been proven quite wrong in just one game. What is also true is that trying to solve the problem by bringing in new players is not necessarily going to be the way forward. For the players who have been failing of late for Arsenal are not bad players at all; they are good players wilting under the stress.
Of course if Arsenal were to win 2-0 this week, the defeat by Bournemouth would be forgotten. If not, there will be demands for change, and the fact that most such changes don’t work, would as ever, be lost. Never forget how much the journalists love this situation – no need to do any research, just announce that Arsenal have lost it and then go down the pub.
And of course amidst it all we have the fact that Jurrien Timber is probably out for a while, and it looks like Martin Odegaard is struggling with an injury.
So the manager made a gamble with the selection, and it didn’t work. But then if he had not made a gamble, that might not have worked either. Maybe we do need a new psychologist. Or at least a different psychology.
Was there anything good about the day? Well, yes there was in the fact that we got some pictures on TV of Arsenal’s top scorer this season sitting in the stand and (at the start at least) looking ok. That this player hasn’t played for quite a long time tells us quite a bit about the problem.
That player is Havertz of course, with 15 goals this season, and to have lost him and Saka at the same time has been the killer blow. The simple fact is that team has been too unsettled by the changes.
The benefit that PSG has of having already won their title weeks ago, through being about the only team that can win the French League (they are 20 points ahead of their nearest rival) shows the benefit of having a one-team league. We don’t have that in England and that causes difficulty at a moment like this – although I’d still sooner have a competitive league rather than the procession that the French have – or that we had with the ceaseless ManC league titles.