IT is hard to imagine Wilf Copping wearing gloves of any description, let alone the pretty red ones, of a type regularly discarded by babies in supermarkets, donned by half the Arsenal team at Highbury on Saturday.

Gloves or no gloves, Arsene Wenger's Arsenal are more likely to warm the hands than did George Graham's team during its bleaker periods. Yet, the old blatherskite did win two league championships - and much more besides - and Wenger is fast approaching the point where an undoubtedly positive approach will need to matched by positive achievements.

Third place in the Premiership and an FA Cup third round tie at home to Sunderland would suggest that Highbury's expectations are far from idle. Arsenal, however, have taken only three points, from three draws, in their last four matches and on three occasions have failed to win after scoring the first goal.

"One-nil to the Ars-en-al, one-nil . . ." became Graham's theme song, but so far this season, that result has only featured in one game in which Arsenal have been involved, and that was their defeat at Manchester United in mid-November.

They led twice against Aston Villa on Saturday, but after a rousing second half were glad enough to share four goals with Brian Little's team.

A week earlier, they had been beaten by Nottingham Forest, the bottom club, after taking the lead. The weekend before that, only a late equaliser from Patrick Vieira had spared them a home defeat by Derby County who, like Villa, came from behind to have the better of a 2-2 draw.

"At the end of the season, every team will have played a certain number of draws and ultimately we may be grateful for this afternoon's point," Wenger reflected. "We could have easily lost the game today.

"Maybe I'm an optimist," he added, "but I think this team can do, very well in the second half of the season.

The fact that Arsenal have still lost only three times in the league and continue to possess the Premiership's sole unbeaten home record makes this a plausible theory.

At the moment, however, Wenger's squad does not have the depth to compare with those of Liverpool or Manchester United. In addition, Arsenal are about to lose Ian Wright for three matches, the striker's appeal against his dismissal at Forest having been rejected by the referee of that game, Steve Lodge.

It will be remembered that Wright, having been body checked by Nikola Jerkan, then walked across and aimed a kick at the Forest player. Arsenal's plea that the Croatian had overreacted, while true, was still not much of a defence.

Wright should have taken note of the equanimity with which Dwight Yorke accepted the jarring challenges from behind to which the Aston Villa striker was frequently subjected on Saturday. For much of the first half Steve Bould was all around Yorke like a clinging vine but the referee, Jeff Winter, had apparently misplaced his grapes of wrath.

Losing Wright against Sunderland in Cup and league, and maybe a cup replay, which would make him available for the visit of Everton on January 19th, will be particularly tiresome for Wenger just now. Dennis Bergkamp is in superb form, Vieira, back from suspension is again a profound influence in midfield, David Seaman's broken ribs are almost mended and the loss of David Platt hardly amounts to a crisis, given his recent indifferent form.

Wright remains the best chance Arsenal have of winning something this season, and the more matches he misses the slimmer that chance will be. Against Villa, he began in routine fashion, sliding the ball past Mark Bosnich in the 13th minute after Bergkamp's quick through pass had caught the defence square.

On other afternoons, Wright might have completed a hat trick. Marvellous control by Bergkamp, followed by another through ball, appeared to have set him up for a second goal nine minutes before half time, but Riccardo Scimeca, recovering with admirable speed, hooked Wright's shot off the line. Early in the second half, Wright shook off Steve Staunton only to shoot wide from a narrower angle.

Scimeca's rescue proved to be the moment the match started to turn Villa's way. If the first half was dominated by Vieira and Bergkamp, the second belonged to Yorke, Mark Draper and Andy Townsend.

Doubts about Savo Milosevic are manifold and the large Serb continues to move around the field with the studied slowness of the six million dollar man. But having scored two of Villa's five goals against Wimbledon six days earlier, he now brought the scores level in the 68th minute with an athletic volley from Nelson's centre.

Five minutes later, Paul Merson gathered a pass from Morrow, who had come on for Reme Garde, and took the ball square across the face of the Aston Villa defence before restoring Arsenal's lead with a typically audacious shot inside the right hand post. Within seconds, however, Milosevic, turning provider, had sent in Yorke for Villa's second goal.

"Too static, too predictable," was how Little summed up Villa's performance in the first half. "We're trying to learn from what's going on," he added, "and the way we came back in the second half gives you hope."

Unlike the decision to portray Martin Keown, the Arsenal supporters' player of the year, on the front of the programme carrying a mounted replica of a handgun, presumably his award. Beyond taste, beyond comment.