Did Arsenal play well at Bayer Leverkusen? No. Did they come away with a useful draw despite that? Yes.
Are the Gunners out of gas? They looked a little leggy, sure. A bit disjointed, not for the first time. But if you’re judging their energy levels on one game, then the same question has to be asked of Manchester City, Chelsea and Liverpool, who all lost in the last 48 hours. Sp*rs, we don’t even have to mention.
Was the result more important than the performance? Ask yourself whether you’d feel better this morning if the team had dazzled with a swashbuckling display but still ended up losing.
While Mikel Arteta was far from satisfied with his side’s performance, particularly the way Leverkusen capitalised on a sloppy start to the second half, he was keen to keep things in context, reminding people “how difficult it is to win against any opponent in the competition and especially away from home.”
“There is a big factor there,” he added. “You realise what we’ve done to win eight games in a row in this competition because it’s so tough that nobody did it before [in the new group phase].
“We’re fully aware of that, we knew the importance of the game and the difficulty of the opponent and now we need to finish it in London.”
Look, we know this Arsenal side are not always an easy watch. Your eyes do not deceive you. Then again, they are not easy to play against either. Failure, frustration and pain have shaped this team, not sugar and spice and all things nice. They are cautious, calculated and precise. They are also human, prone to lapses in concentration against other highly tuned athletes.
But they are still good. Disciplined, technically strong, with depth in the squad and character when it’s required. Those qualities do not always get you off your seat, unless it’s to retrieve the cushion you just hurled at the television because the constant recycling of possession is driving you mad.
Still, there is method to the madness. Just when it looked like Arsenal might be tempted into a basketball game, they held their nerve.
On the mindset of his side in the closing stages, Arteta said: “That’s why I said that emotionally it becomes a very different game because you know that is a team that is very, very good in transition and you have more hurry and more rush to create danger to go and draw the game, and you can get caught while doing that.
“I liked that emotionally we understood what we had to do. The level of execution obviously has to be better and it will be better in the second leg. We will adapt a few things and then we’ll move on.”
And moving on is exactly what Arsenal must do. Because when the games come this quickly, perfection is a luxury. Progress is what matters.