Arsenal 1 Aston Villa 1THE OUTCOME was as enigmatic as Arsenal's season. It is unclear whether this is another transitional year in the rebuilding of the side or a campaign that will bring the title to the Emirates.
There was exhilaration over an unmerited equaliser in the dregs of stoppage time, but Cesc Fabregas had reverted to realism by the time a microphone was pointed at him.
"Considering how the game went," said the midfielder, "it was not bad, but I am not delighted."
Over eight days a couple of draws have seen Arsenal's lead shrivel from five points to one in the Premier League. Nonetheless, mood counts for as much as numbers and Arsene Wenger will be telling his squad that they showed the mental hardiness to prise some reward out of the fixture.
Not even this manager, though, would be able to persuade the team that they are in good shape. Following the dreadful injury to Eduardo da Silva at Birmingham City, it was imagined Arsenal would be impassioned. In fact, they were so subdued they might have been brooding over their team-mate.
It is as well that this is a more pragmatic Arsenal than those we have known in the past. An approach that was once designed to serve Thierry Henry has altered now that he is gone and the side no longer confine themselves to manoeuvring their way through a throng of opponents.
In the third minute of stoppage time Gael Clichy crossed deep and Emmanuel Adebayor outjumped Martin Laursen to head down for the substitute Nicklas Bendtner, who had eluded Ashley Young, to shoot home. The two men who had combined did not celebrate together and their clash during the English League Cup semi-final at White Hart Lane may linger in the minds of both. "I think every time I come on, we play all right together," said Bendtner.
Wenger purports not to care about the relationship between the two since he trusts them to "do what the game demands".
He suggests there is no great problem: "You don't have to be friends to play well together."
The manager argued that the real difficulty for the side had been the after-effects of the injury to Eduardo.
"Basically," he said, "everybody thinks, 'That could have happened to me'."
Nonetheless, the gravest trouble for Wenger was the quality of Villa's display. Martin O'Neill's team have now drawn at Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea after holding the lead in each case.
The manager admits, somewhat wearily, that his team always look likely to score and to concede, but the development at Villa has been great. Not even the ruptured Achilles' tendon on Saturday that has ended Curtis Davies's season looked like distracting them.
The team was forever ready to use Gabriel Agbonlahor's pace to knock Arsenal off-balance, and it was his cross, after he had beaten William Gallas, that was turned into his own net by Philippe Senderos in the 28th minute. There might have been more goals, and Manuel Almunia had to tip a Shaun Maloney effort on to the woodwork.
Someone asked O'Neill whether Arsenal had been persevering opponents or just "lucky bastards". The manager thought "the latter". It grated with him, too, that Wenger, muddling the true statistics, had claimed Arsenal were somehow victimised.
"He's a brilliant manager but he's a bad mathematician," said O'Neill of the economics graduate.
Wenger's team are not actually aesthetes perpetually set upon by louts. That is just as well, since their cause in the Premier League would otherwise be hopeless. His players are hardy enough to keep on going and 20 of the side's 57 goals in the Premier League have come from the 78th minute on.
The margin for error has all but vanished for Arsenal, whose away matches with Chelsea and Manchester United are now critical. Tomorrow, too, they play Milan in San Siro following a goalless draw in the home leg of the Champions League last-16 tie.
It will be interesting to see how Wenger finds the attacking edge that will be needed. On Saturday, the teenager Theo Walcott was initially sharp and menacing against Villa but the manager later switched him to the flank so that the listless Alexander Hleb could be hauled towards the thick of the action. It was an adjustment that seemed to deepen the team's plight.
The encounter with Villa was as uncomfortable for Wenger as for any of his squad. His options could be a little better in Milan, with Robin van Persie possibly among the substitutes and Kolo Toure not yet ruled out, but everyone at Arsenal, from manager to players, will have to be far sharper.
