Southampton 1 Arsenal 1: Arsenal's season continues to disintegrate. Though there is no shame in taking a point from St Mary's, where Southampton have not lost since September, the repercussions of this fixture are set to linger.
An injury to Robert Pires's left ankle, described as a "bad sprain" by Arsene Wenger and one that will keep him out for at least three matches, was compounded by the dismissal of the impetuous, petulant Robin van Persie. A goal up and benefiting from a one-man advantage following the dismissal of Southampton's David Prutton, Wenger exhorted his team to finish the game at full strength.
Arsenal's scorer Freddie Ljungberg spoke for the rest of his team-mates when he said: "We talked about it at half-time. When the opposition has had someone sent off you always have to be careful and give no silly free-kicks or second yellow cards. We specifically talked about it and within five minutes of the restart we are down to 10. There's no question that was very disappointing."
Such comments could point to the breakdown of the team spirit that was so carefully fostered during the unbeaten campaign of last season. However, Ljungberg was careful to underline that "Van Persie has not let the side down". None the less, having failed to close the gap on Chelsea while the Premiership leaders had League Cup commitments, frustrations clearly abound at Highbury.
Tuesday's 3-1 defeat to Bayern Munich put them on the Champions League precipice and Dennis Bergkamp and Jose Antonio Reyes are unavailable for tomorrow's FA Cup fifth-round replay at Sheffield United. With each passing match that competition has become their best chance of silverware this season. Bergkamp and Reyes were involved in a melee against the Championship side at Highbury, prompting three-match bans for both.
Wenger is right to feel aggrieved that Danny Cullip's apparently vicious stamp on the 17-year-old Cesc Fabregas's head received just a booking when his players' feeble retribution prompted three-match bans. Wenger points to having finished top of last season's fair-play league but recent indiscipline recalls less successful days.
So deep does Wenger's injury and suspension crisis run that even the 17-year-old Italian striker Arturo Lupoli, with just three senior matches to his name, has become a contender to play tomorrow night. Of greatest concern to Arsenal is Pires's enforced absence.
Southampton's manager Harry Redknapp did not hide from the facts in assessing the impact of Prutton's two brutal challenges, the first on Mathieu Flamini and the second on Pires. What was most disturbing for Redknapp, however, was the 23-year-old's violent reaction to his dismissal. Prutton twice shoved the referee in an attempt to mete his revenge on the linesman Paul Norman, who had advised the second booking, and will be lucky if he is not suspended for the remainder of this season.
"After the first booking today you would think (Prutton) would say to himself, well hang on here, I can't afford to dive in," said Redknapp. "But Pires is going with his back to his own goal, he lays the ball off and (Prutton) comes in and whacks him. There's no sense in it."
Arsenal had taken the lead within seconds of Prutton's dismissal, Ljungberg converting Thierry Henry's centre from five yards out. The feeling then was that Arsenal would run away with it, until Jens Lehmann erred for the fourth time in five days to offer Peter Crouch an unguarded goal for his headed equaliser.
And so Wenger has another worry: what to do about his liability of a goalkeeper. The young Paul Smith kept Southampton in this match with a string of outstanding saves that further highlighted Lehmann's blunder.
"The keeper of Southampton had a great game," said Wenger. "But at Arsenal you touch one or two balls in the game, you have to make the saves and not make mistakes in your decisions. That's a different game and it's the same in all the big clubs now - it's very difficult. You need concentration, maturity, experience." Unfortunately for Arsenal those are qualities that Lehmann and Van Persie did not display.
